BY 

ARTHUR    C.    BENSON 

FELLOW   OF   MAGDALENE   COLLEGE 
CAMBRIDGE 


THE  UPTON    LETTERS 

FROM    A  COLLEGE 
WINDOW 

BESIDE  STILL  WATERS 

THE  ALTAR  FIRE 

THE    SCHOOLMASTER 

AT  LARGE 

THE  GATE  OF  DEATH 

THE  SILENT  ISLE 


THE 
SILENT    ISLE 


By 

ARTHUR  CHRISTOPHER  BENSON 

Fellow  of  Magdalene  College,  Cambridge 


Ntc  prohibui  cor  meum 


0.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

NEW  YORK  7XND  LONDON 

Zbe  "fcntcfterbocfter  press 

1910 


Copyright,  1910 

BY 

ARTHUR  CHRISTOPHER  BENSON 

Published,  November,  1910 
Reprinted,  December,  1910 


|filO 


Go 

PERCY  LUBBOCK 


INTRODUCTION 

There  are  two  ways  of  recording  and  communicat- 
ing to  others  an  impression,  say,  of  a  building  or  a 
place.  One  way  is  to  sit  down  at  a  definite  point, 
and  make  an  elaborate  picture.  It  is  thus  per- 
haps that  one  grasps  the  artistic  significance  and 
unity  of  the  object  best;  one  sees  it  in  a  chosen 
light  of  noon  or  eve;  one  feels  its  dominant  emo- 
tion, its  harmony  of  proportion  and  outline. 
Or  else  one  may  wander  about  and  take  sketches 
of  it  from  a  dozen  different  points  of  view,  record 
little  delicacies  of  detail,  tiny  whims  and  irregulari- 
ties; and  thus  one  learns  more  of  the  variety  and 
humours  of  the  place,  its  gestures  and  irrita- 
bilities, its  failures  of  purpose  or  design.  The 
question  is  whether  you  like  a  thing  idealised  or 
realised.  As  to  the  different  methods  of  interpre- 
tation, they  can  hardly  be  compared  or  subordin- 
ated. An  artist  does  not  choose  his  method, 
because  his  method  is  himself. 

The  book  that  follows  is  an  attempt,  or  rather  a 
hundred  attempts,  to  sketch  some  of  the  details  of 


vi  Introduction 

life,  seen  from  a  simple  plane  enough,  and  with 
no  desire  to  conform  it  to  a  theory,  or  to  find  any- 
thing very  definite  in  it,  or  to  omit  anything 
because  it  did  not  fit  in  with  prejudices  or  pre- 
dilections. The  only  unity  of  mood  which  it 
reflects  is  the  unity  of  purpose  which  comes  from 
a  decision.  I  had  chosen  a  life  which  seemed  to 
me  then  to  be  wholesome,  temperate,  and  simple, 
in  exchange  for  a  life  that  was  complicated, 
restless,  a:id  mechanical.  The  choice  was  not  in 
the  least  a  revolt  against  conventions;  it  was  only 
the  result  of  a  deliberate  belief  that  conventions 
were  not  necessary  to  contentment,  and  that  if  one 
never  ventured  anything  in  general,  one  would 
never  gain  anything  in  particular.  It  was  not, 
to  speak  with  absolute  frankness,  intended  to  be 
an  attempt  to  shirk  my  fair  share  of  the  natural 
human  burden.  If  I  had  believed  in  my  own 
power  of  bearing  that  burden  profitably  and 
efficiently,  I  hope  I  should  not  have  laid  it  down. 
It  was  rather  that  I  thought  that  I  had  carried  a 
burden  long  enough,  without  having  the  curiosity 
to  see  what  it  contained.  When  I  did  untie  it 
and  inspect  it,  it  seemed  to  me  that  a  great  part 
of  what  it  contained  was  not  particularly  useful, 
but  designed,  like  the  furniture  of  the  White 
Knight's  horse,  in  Through  the  Looking-Glass, 
to  provide  against  unlikely  contingencies.  I 
thought  that  I  might  live  life,  of  the  brevity  and 


Introduction  vii 

frailty  of  which  I  had  become  suddenly  aware, 
upon  simpler  and  more  rational  lines. 

I  was  then,  in  embarking  upon  this  book,  in 
what  may  be  described  as  a  holiday -making  frame 
of  mind,  as  a  man  might  be  who,  after  a  long 
period  of  sedentary  life,  finds  himself  at  leisure, 
strolling  about  on  a  sunny  morning  in  a  pictur- 
esque foreign  town,  in  that  delicious  mood  when 
the  smallest  sights  and  sounds  and  incidents  have 
a  sharpness  and  delicacy  of  flavour  which  brings 
back  the  untroubled  and  joyful  passivity  of  child- 
hood, when  one  had  no  need  to  do  anything  in 
particular ,  because  it  was  enough  to  be.  It  seemed 
so  futile  to  go  on  consuming  stolidly  and  grimly 
the  porridge  of  life,  when  one  might  take  one's 
choice  of  its  dainties!  I  had  no  temptation  to 
waste  my  substance  in  riotous  living.  I  had  no 
relish  for  the  passionate  and  feverish  delights  of 
combat  and  chase.  It  did  not  seem  to  be  worth 
while  to  pretend  that  I  had,  merely  for  the  sake 
of  being  considered  robust  and  full-blooded.  To 
speak  the  truth,  I  did  not  particularly  care  what 
other  people  thought  of  my  experiment.  It 
seemed  to  me  that  I  had  deferred  to  all  that  too 
long;  and  though  I  had  no  wish  to  break  violently 
with  the  world  or  to  set  it  at  defiance,  I  thought 
I  might  venture  to  find  a  little  corner  and  a  little 
book,  and  see  the  current  spin  by.  It  seemed  to 
me,  too,  that  most  of  the  people  who  waxed  elo- 


viii  Introduction 

quent  about  the  normal  duties  and  responsibilities 
of  life  chose  them  not  reluctantly  and  philosophic- 
ally, but  because,  on  the  whole,  they  preferred  them, 
and  felt  dull  without  them;  and  I  imagined  that  I 
had  my  right  to  a  preference  too,  particularly  if  it 
was  not  pursued  at  the  expense  of  other  people. 

Whether  or  not  the  choice  was  wise  or  foolish  will 
be  seen,  or  may  be  inferred.  But  I  do  not  abjure 
the  theory.  I  think  and  believe  that  there  are  a 
good  many  people  in  the  world  who  pursue  lives 
for  which  they  are  not  fitted,  and  lose  all  content- 
ment in  the  process,  simply  because  they  respect 
conventions  too  much,  and  have  not  the  courage  to 
break  away  from  them.  Some  of  the  most  useful 
people  I  know  are  people  who  not  only  think  least 
about  being  useful,  but  are  ready  to  condemn 
themselves  for  their  desultoriness.  The  people 
who  have  time  to  listen  and  to  talk,  to  welcome 
friends  and  to  sympathise  with  them,  to  enjoy  and 
to  help  others  to  enjoy,  seem  to  me  often  to  do  more 
for  the  world  than  the  people  who  hurry  from 
committee  to  committee,  address  meetings,  and  do 
what  is  called  some  of  the  drudgery  of  the  world, 
which  might  in  a  hundred  cases  be  just  as  well 
undone.  It  is  most  of  it  merely  a  childish  game 
either  way;  and  the  child  who  looks  on  and  ap- 
plauds is  often  better  employed  than  the  child 
who  makes  a  long  score,  and  thinks  of  nothing 
else  for  the  rest  of  the  afternoon. 


Introduction  ix 

And  anyhow,  this  is  what  I  saw  and  thought 
and  did;  not  a  very  magnificent  performance,  but 
a  little  piece  of  life  observed  and  experienced  and 
written  down. 


The  Silent  Isle 


The  Silent  Isle,  I  name  it;  and  yet  in  no  land 
in  which  I  have  ever  lived  is  there  so  little  sight 
and  sound  of  water  as  here.  It  oozes  from  field 
to  drain,  it  trickles  from  drain  to  ditch,  it  falls 
from  ditch  to  dyke,  and  then  moves  silently  to 
the  great  seaward  sluice;  it  is  not  a  living  thing 
in  the  landscape,  bright  and  vivacious,  but 
rather  something  secret  and  still,  drawn  almost 
reluctantly  away,  rather  than  hurrying  off  on 
business  of  its  own.  And  yet  the  whole  place 
gives  me  the  constant  sense  of  being  an  island, 
remote  and  unapproachable;  the  great  black 
plain,  where  every  step  that  one  takes  warns 
one  of  its  quivering  elasticity  of  soil,  runs  sharply 
up  to  the  base  of  the  long,  low,  green  hills,  whose 
rough,  dimpled  pastures  and  old  elms  contrast 
sharply  and  pleasantly  with  the  geometrical 
monotony  of  the  immense  flat.  The  village  that 
I  see  a  mile  away,  on  a  further  promontory  of 


2  The  Silent  Isle 

the  old  Isle,  has  the  look  of  a  straggling  seaport 
town,  dipping  down  to  wharves  and  quays;  and 
the  eye  almost  expects  a  fringe  of  masts  and 
shipping  at  the  base  of  the  steep  streets.  Then, 
too,  the  encircling  plain  is  like  water  in  its  track- 
lessness.  There  are  no  short  cuts  nor  footpaths 
in  the  fen.  You  may  strike  out  for  the  village  that 
on  clear  days  looks  so  close  at  hand,  and  follow 
a  flood-bank  for  miles  without  drawing  a  pace 
nearer  tc  the  goal.  Or  you  may  find  yourself 
upon  the  edge  of  one  of  the  great  lodes  or  levels, 
and  see  the  pale-blue  stripe  of  water  lie  unbridged, 
like  a  pointed  javelin  of  steel,  to  the  extreme 
verge  of  the  horizon.  The  few  roads  run  straight 
and  strict  upon  their  reed-fringed  causeways ;  and 
there  is  an  infinite  sense  of  tranquil  relief  to  the 
eye  in  the  vast  green  levels,  with  their  faint 
parallel  lines  of  dyke  or  drift,  just  touched  into 
prominence  here  and  there  by  the  clump  of 
poplars  surrounding  a  lonely  grange,  or  the  high- 
shouldered  roof  of  a  great  pumping-mill.  And 
then,  to  give  largeness  to  what  might  else  be 
tame,  there  is  the  vast  space  of  sky  everywhere, 
the  enormous  perspective  of  rolling  cloud-bank 
and  fleecy  cumulus :  the  sky  seems  higher,  deeper, 
more  gigantic,  in  these  great  levels  than  any- 
where in  the  world.  The  morning  comes  up 
more  sedately;  the  orange-skirted  twilight  is 
more  lingeringly  withdrawn.  The  sun  burns 
lower,  down  to  the  very  verge  of   the  world, 


The  Voices  of  the  Air  3 

dropping   behind    no    black-stemmed   wood   or 
high-standing  ridge;  and  how  softly  the  colour 
fades  westward  out  of  the  sky,  among  the  rose- 
flushed  cloud-isles  and  green  spaces  of  air !    And 
out  of  all  this  spacious  tracklessness  comes  a 
sense  of  endless  remoteness.     While  the  roads 
converge  like  the  rays  of  a  wheel  upon  the  in- 
land town,  each  a  stream  of  hurrying  life,  here 
the  world  flows  to  you  more  rarely  and  delib- 
erately.    Indeed,  there  seems  no  influx  of  life 
at  all,  nothing  but  a  quiet  interchange  of  voy- 
agers.    Promotion  arrives  from  no  point  of  the 
compass;  nothing  but  a  little  tide   of  homely 
life  ebbs  and  flows  in  these  elm-girt  villages 
above  the  fen.     Of  course,  the  anxious  and  ex- 
pectant heart  carries  its  own  restlessness  every- 
where; but  to  read  of  the  rush  and  stress  of  life 
in  these  grassy  solitudes  seems  like  the  telling  of 
an  idle  tale.    And  then  the  silence  of  the  place ! 
The  sounds  of  life  have  a  value  and  a  distinct- 
ness here  that  I  have  never  known  elsewhere.    I 
have  lived  much  of  my  life  in  towns ;  and  there, 
even  if  one  is  not  conscious  of  distinct  sound, 
there  is  a   blurred   sense  of  movement  in  the 
air,  which  dulls  the  ear.    But  here  the  sharp  song 
of  the  yellow-hammer  from  the  hedge,  or  the  cry 
of  the  owl  from  the  spinney,  come  pure  and  keen 
through  the  thin  air,   purged  of  all  uncertain 
murmurs.    I  can  hear,  it  seems,  a  mile  away,  the 
rumble  of  the  long  procession  of  red  mud-stained 


4  The  Silent  Isle 

field-carts,  or  the  humming  of  the  threshing- 
gear  ;  or  the  chatter  of  children  on  the  farm-road 
beyond  my  shrubberies  breaks  clear  and  jocund 
on  the  ear.  I  become  conscious  here  of  how 
noisily  and  hurriedly  I  have  lived  my  life ;  happily 
enough,  I  will  confess;  but  the  thought  of  it  all — 
the  class-room,  the  street,  the  playing-field — 
bright  and  vivacious  as  it  all  was,  seems  now 
like  a  boisterous  prelude  of  blaring  brass  and 
tingling  string,  which  lapses  into  some  delicate 
economy  of  sweet  melody  and  gliding  chord. 
It  has  its  shadows,  I  do  not  doubt,  this  silent 
isle;  but  to-day  at  least  it  is  all  still  and  trans- 
lucent as  its  clear-moving  quiet  waters,  free  as 
its  vaulted  sky,  rich  as  its  endless  plain. 

It  is  not  that  I  mean  to  be  idle  here!  I  have 
my  web  to  weave;  I  have  my  lucid  mirror.  But 
instead  of  scrambling  and  peeping,  I  mean  to  see 
it  all  clearly  and  tranquilly,  without  dust  and 
noise.  I  have  lived  laboriously  and  hastily  for 
twenty  years ;  and  surely  there  is  a  time  for  gar- 
nering the  harvest  and  for  reckoning  up  the 
store?  I  want  to  see  behind  it  all,  into  the  mean- 
ing of  it  all,  if  I  can.  Surely  when  we  are  bidden 
to  consider  the  lilies  of  the  field,  and  told  that 
they  neither  toil  nor  spin,  it  is  not  that  we  may 
turn  aside  from  them  in  scorn,  and  choose 
rather  to  grow  rank  and  strong,  bulging  like 
swedes,  shoulder  by  shoulder,  in  the  gross 
furrow.    It  is  not  as  though  we  content  ourselves 


Useless  Occupation  5 

with  the  necessary  work  of  the  world;  we  multiply- 
vain  activities,  we  turn  the  songs  of  poets  and 
the  words  of  the  wise  into  dumb-bells  to  toughen 
our  intellectual  muscles;  we  make  our  pastimes 
into  envious  rivalries  and  furious  emulations; 
and  when  we  have  poured  out  our  contempt 
upon  a  few  quiet-minded  dreamers  for  their 
lack  of  spirit,  scarified  a  few  lovers  of  leisure 
for  their  absence  of  agility,  ploughed  up  a  few 
pretty  wastes  where  the  field-flowers  grew  as 
they  would,  bred  up  a  few  hundred  gay  golden 
birds,  that  we  may  gloat  over  the  thought  of 
striking  them  blood-bedabbled  out  of  the  sky 
on  a  winter  afternoon,  we  think  complacently  of 
the  Kingdom  of  God,  and  all  we  have  done  so 
diligently  to  hasten  its  coming. 

There  is  a  pleasant  story  of  a  man  who  was 
asked  by  an  ardent  missionary  for  a  subscription 
to  some  enterprise  or  other  in  the  ends  of  the 
earth.  The  man  produced  a  shilling  and  a  sov- 
ereign. "  Here  is  a  shilling  for  the  work,"  he  said, 
"and  here  is  a  sovereign  to  get  it  out  there!" 
That  seems  to  me  an  allegory  of  much  of  our 
Western  work.  So  little  of  it  direct  benefit,  so 
much  of  it  indirect  transit !  When  I  was  a  school- 
master, it  always  seemed  to  me  that  nine  tenths 
of  what  we  did  was  looking  over  work  which  we 
had  given  the  boys  to  do  to  fill  up  their  time,  and 
to  keep  them,  as  we  used  to  say,  out  of  mischief. 
The  worst  of  bringing  up  boys  on  that  system  is 


6  The  Silent  Isle 

that  they  require  to  be  kept  out  of  mischief  all 
their  life  long ;  and  yet  the  worst  kind  of  mischief, 
after  all,  may  be  to  fill  life  with  useless  occupa- 
tions. There  are  two  ways  of  going  out  into  your 
garden.  You  may  walk  out  straight  from  the 
bow- window  on  to  the  lawn;  or  you  may  go  out 
into  the  street,  take  the  first  turn  to  the  right, 
then  the  next  to  the  right,  and  let  yourself  in  at 
the  back-garden  door.  But  there  is  no  merit  in 
that!  It  is  not  a  thing  to  be  complacent  about; 
still  less  does  it  justify  you  in  saying  to  the  sim- 
ple person  who  prefers  the  direct  course  that  the 
world  is  getting  lazy  and  decadent  and  is  always 
trying  to  save  trouble.  The  point  is  to  have 
lived,  not  to  have  been  merely  occupied.  I  re- 
member once,  when  I  was  an  undergraduate, 
staying  at  a  place  in  Scotland  for  a  summer 
holiday.  There  were  all  sorts  of  pleasant  things 
to  be  done,  and  we  were  there  to  amuse  our- 
selves. One  evening  it  was  suggested  that  we 
should  go  out  yachting  on  the  following  day.  I 
agreed  to  go,  but  being  a  miserable  sailor,  added 
that  I  should  only  go  if  it  were  fine.  We  were  to 
start  early,  and  when  I  was  called  and  found  it 
an  ugly,  gusty  morning  I  went  gratefully  back  to 
bed,  and  spent  the  rest  of  the  day  fishing.  There 
was  a  dreadful,  strenuous  old  Colonel  staying  in 
the  house;  he  had  been  with  the  yachting  party, 
and  they  had  had  a  very  disagreeable  day.  That 
evening  in  the  smoking-room,   when  we  were 


Is  It  Worth  While?  7 

recounting  our  adventures,  the  old  wretch  said 
to  me:  "Now  I  should  like  to  give  you  a  piece  of 
advice.  You  said  you  would  go  with  us,  and 
shirked  because  you  were  afraid  of  a  bit  of  wind. 
You  must  excuse  an  older  man  who  knows  some- 
thing of  the  world  saying  straight  out  that  that 
sort  of  thing  won 't  do.  Make  up  your  mind  and 
stick  to  it;  that's  a  golden  rule. "  It  was  in  vain 
that  I  said  that  I  had  never  intended  to  go  if  it 
was  windy,  and  that  I  should  have  been  ill  the 
whole  time.  "Ah,  that's  what  I  call  cry-baby 
talk, "  said  the  old  ruffian;  "I  always  say  that  if 
a  thing  is  worth  doing  at  all,  it  is  worth  doing 
thoroughly."  I  said  meekly  that  I  should  cer- 
tainly have  been  thoroughly  sea-sick,  but  that  I 
did  not  think  it  was  worth  while  being  sea-sick 
at  all.  At  which  he  felt  very  much  nettled,  and 
said  that  it  was  effeminate.  I  was  very  much 
humiliated,  but  not  in  the  least  convinced;  and 
I  am  afraid  that  I  enjoyed  the  most  unchristian 
exultation  when,  two  or  three  days  after,  the 
Colonel  insisted  on  walking  to  the  deer-forest, 
instead  of  riding  the  pony  that  was  offered  him ; 
in  consequence  of  which  he  not  only  lost  half  the 
day,  but  got  so  dreadfully  tired  that  he  missed 
two  stags  in  succession,  and  came  home  empty- 
handed,  full  of  excellent  excuses,  and  more 
pragmatical  than  ever. 

Of  course,  a  man  has  to  decide  for  himself.    If 
he  does  not  desire  leisure,  if  he  finds  it  weari- 


8  The  Silent  Isle 

some  and  mischevious,  he  had  better  not  cultivate 
it ;  if  his  conscience  tells  him  that  he  must  go  on 
with  a  particular  work,  he  had  better  simply 
obey  the  command.  But  it  is  very  easy  to  edu- 
cate a  false  conscience  in  these  matters  by  mere 
habit;  and  if  you  play  tricks  with  your  mind  or 
your  conscience  habitually,  it  has  an  ugly  habit 
of  ending  by  playing  tricks  upon  you,  like  the 
Old  Man  of  the  Sea.  The  false  conscience 
is  satisfied  and  the  real  conscience  drugged,  if  a 
person  with  a  sense  of  duty  to  others  fills  up  his 
time  with  unnecessary  letters  and  useless  inter- 
views; worse  still  if  he  goes  about  proclaiming 
with  complacent  pride  that  his  work  gives  him 
no  time  to  read  or  think.  If  he  has  any  respon- 
sibility in  the  matter,  if  it  is  his  business  to  help 
or  direct  others,  he  ought  to  be  sure  that  he 
has  something  to  give  them  beyond  platitudes 
which  he  has  not  tested.  In  the  story  of  Mary 
and  Martha,  which  is  a  very  mysterious  one,  it  is 
quite  clear  that  Martha  was  rebuked,  not  for 
being  hospitable,  but  for  being  fussy;  but  it  is 
not  at  all  clear  what  Mary  was  praised  for — 
certainly  not  for  being  useful.  She  was  not 
praised  for  visiting  the  sick,  or  for  attending 
committees,  but  apparently  for  doing  nothing — ■ 
for  sitting  still,  for  listening  to  talk,  and  for 
being  interested.  Presumably  both  were  sym- 
pathetic, and  Martha  showed  it  by  practical 
kindness,  and  attention  to  the  knives  and   the 


A  Sense  of  Duty  9 

plates.  But  what  was  the  one  thing  needful? 
What  was  the  good  part,  which  Mary  had  chosen, 
and  which  would  not  be  taken  from  her?  The 
truth  is  that  there  is  very  little  said  about  active 
work  in  the  Gospel.  It  is,  indeed,  rather  made 
fun  of,  if  one  may  use  such  an  expression. 
There  is  a  great  deal  about  simple  kindness 
and  neighbourliness,  but  nothing  about  making 
money,  or  social  organisation.  In  a  poor  village 
community  the  problem  was  no  doubt  an 
easier  one;  but  in  our  more  complicated  civil- 
isation it  is  not  so  easy  to  see  how  to  act.  Sup- 
pose I  am  seized  with  a  sudden  impulse  of 
benevolence,  what  am  I  to  do?  In  the  old  story- 
books one  took  a  portion  of  one's  dinner  to  a 
sick  person,  or  went  to  read  aloud  to  some  one. 
But  it  is  not  so  easy  to  find  the  right  people. 
If  I  set  off  here  on  a  round  with  a  slop-basin 
containing  apple-fritters,  my  intrusion  would 
be  generally  and  rightly  resented;  and  as  for 
being  read  aloud  to  or  visited  when  I  am  ill, 
there  is  nothing  I  should  personally  dislike 
more  than  a  succession  of  visitors  bent  on  bene- 
volence. I  might  put  up  with  it  if  I  felt  that  it 
sprung  from  a  genuine  affection,  but  if  I  felt 
it  was  done  from  a  sense  of  duty,  it  would  be 
an  intolerable  addition  to  my  troubles.  Many 
people  in  grief  and  trouble  only  desire  not  to 
be  interfered  with,  and  to  be  left  alone,  and  when 
they  want  sympathy  they  know  how  and  where 


io  The  Silent  Isle 

to  ask  for  it.  Personally  I  do  not  want  sym- 
pathy at  all  if  I  am  in  trouble,  because  it  only 
makes  me  suffer  more;  the  real  comfort  under 
such  circumstances  is  when  people  behave  quite 
naturally,  as  if  there  were  no  troubles  in  the 
world;  then  one  has  to  try  to  behave  decently 
and  that  is  one's  best  chance  of  forgetting 
oneself. 

The  only  thing,  it  seems  to  me,  that  one  may 
do,  is  tc  love  people,  if  one  can.  It  is  the  mood 
from  which  sympathy  and  help  spring  that 
matters,  not  the  spoken  word  or  the  material 
aid.  In  the  worst  troubles  one  cannot  help 
people  at  all.  The  knowledge  that  others  love 
you  does  not  fill  the  aching  gap  made  by  the 
death  of  child  or  lover  or  friend.  And  now  too, 
in  these  democratic  days,  when  compassion  and 
help  are  more  or  less  organised,  when  the  sense 
of  the  community  that  children  should  be  taught 
issues  in  Education  Bills,  and  the  feeling  that 
sick  people  must  be  tended  is  expressed  by  hos- 
pitals— when  the  world  has  thus  been  specialised, 
tangible  benevolence  is  a  much  more  complex 
affair.  It  seems  clear  that  it  is  not  really  a  be- 
nevolent thing  to  give  money  to  any  one  who  hap- 
pens to  ask  for  it ;  and  it  is  equally  clear,  it  seems 
to  me,  that  not  much  is  done  by  lecturing  people 
vaguely  about  their  sins  and  negligences;  one 
must  have  a  very  clear  sense  of  one's  own 
victories  over  evil,  and  the  tactics  one  has  em- 


The  Clear  Vision  1 1 

ployed,  to  do  that;  and  if  one  is  conscious,  as  I 
am,  of  not  having  made  a  very  successful  show 
of  resistance  to  personal  faults  and  failings,  the 
pastoral  attitude  is  not  an  easy  one  to  adopt. 
But  if  one  loves  people,  the  problem  is  not  so 
difficult — or  rather  it  solves  itself.  One  can 
compare  notes,  and  discuss  qualities,  and  try  to 
see  what  one  admires  and  thinks  beautiful;  and 
the  only  way,  after  all,  to  make  other  people 
good,  if  that  is  the  end  in  view,  is  to  be  good 
oneself  in  such  a  way  that  other  people  want  to 
be  good  too. 

The  thing  which  really  differentiates  people 
from  each  other,  and  which  sets  a  few  fine  souls 
ahead  of  the  crowd,  is  a  certain  clearness  of 
vision.  Most  of  us  take  things  for  granted  from 
the  beginning,  accept  the  opinions  and  conven- 
tions of  the  world,  and  muddle  along,  taking 
things  as  they  come,  our  only  aim  being  to  collect 
in  our  own  corner  as  many  of  the  good  things  of 
life  as  we  can  gather  round  us.  Indeed,  it  must 
be  confessed  that  among  the  commonest  motives 
for  showing  kindness  are  the  credit  that  results, 
and  the  sense  of  power  and  influence  that  ensues. 
But  that  is  no  good  at  all  to  the  giver.  For  the 
fact  is  that  behind  life,  as  we  see  it,  there  lies 
a  very  strange  and  deep  mystery,  something 
stronger  and  larger  than  we  can  any  of  us  at  all 
grasp.  There  are  a  thousand  roads  to  the  city 
of  God,  and  no  two  roads  are  the  same,  though 


12  The  Silent  Isle 

they  all  lead  to  the  same  place.  If  we  take  up 
the  role  of  being  useful,  the  danger  is  that  we 
become  planted,  like  a  kind  of  professional  guide- 
post,  giving  incomplete  directions  to  others, 
instead  of  finding  the  way  for  ourselves.  The 
mistake  lies  in  thinking  that  things  are  un- 
knowable when  they  are  only  unknown.  Many 
mists  have  melted  already  before  the  eyes  of  the 
pilgrims,  and  the  tracks  grow  plainer  on  the 
hillside;  and  thus  the  clearer  vision  of  which  I 
speak  is  the  thing  to  be  desired  by  all.  We  must 
try  to  see  things  as  they  are,  not  obscured  by 
prejudice  or  privilege  or  sentiment  or  selfish- 
ness; and  sin  does  not  cloud  the  vision  so  much 
as  stupidity  and  conceit.  I  have  a  dream,  then, 
of  what  I  desire  and  aspire  to,  though  it  is  hard 
to  put  it  into  words.  I  want  to  learn  to  dis- 
tinguish between  what  is  important  and  unim- 
portant, between  what  is  beautiful  and  ugly, 
between  what  is  true  and  false.  The  pomps  and 
glories  of  the  world  are  unimportant,  I  believe, 
and  all  the  temptations  which  arise  from  wanting 
to  do  things,  as  it  is  called,  on  a  large  scale. 
Money,  the  love  of  which  as  representing  liberty 
is  a  sore  temptation  to  such  as  myself,  is  unim- 
portant. Conventional  orthodoxies,  whether 
they  be  of  manners,  or  of  ways  of  life,  or  of 
thought,  or  of  religion,  or  of  education,  are  un- 
important. What  then  remains?  Courage,  and 
patience,   and   simplicity,    and    kindness,    and 


Waste  of  Time  and  Energy      13 

beauty,  and,  last  of  all,  ideas  remain;  and  these 
are  the  things  to  lay  hold  of  and  to  live  with. 

And  even  so  one  cannot  help  puzzling  and 
grieving  and  wondering  over  all  the  dreadful 
waste  of  time  and  energy,  all  the  stupidities  and 
misunderstandings,  all  the  unnecessary  business 
and  tiresome  pleasure,  all  the  spitefulness  and 
malignity,  all  the  sham  rules  and  artificial  regu- 
lations, all  the  hard  judgments  and  dismal  fears 
and  ugly  cruelties  of  the  world,  beginning  so 
early  and  ending  so  late.  An  hour  ago  I  met 
two  tiny  children,  a  boy  and  a  girl,  in  the  road. 
The  girl  was  the  older  and  stronger.  The  little 
boy,  singing  to  himself,  had  gathered  some  leaves 
from  the  hedge,  and  was  enjoying  his  posy  harm- 
lessly enough.  What  must  his  sister  do?  She 
wanted  some  fun;  so  she  took  the  posy  away, 
dodged  her  brother  when  he  tried  to  catch  her, 
and  finally  threw  it  over  a  paling,  and  went  off 
rejoicing  in  her  strength,  while  the  little  boy 
sate  down  and  cried.  Why  should  they  not 
have  played  together  in  peace?  On  my  table  lie 
letters  from  two  old  friends  of  mine  who  have 
had  a  quarrel  over  a  small  piece  of  business, 
involving  a  few  pounds.  One  complains  that 
the  other  claims  the  money  unjustly;  the  other 
resents  being  accused  of  meanness;  the  result, 
a  rupture  of  familiar  relations.  One  cannot,  it 
seems,  prevent  sorrows  and  pains  and  tragedies ; 
but  what  is  the  ironical  power  which  gives  us 


14  The  Silent  Isle 

such  rich  materials  for  happiness,  and  then  in- 
fects us  with  the  devilish  power  of  misusing 
them,  and  worrying  over  them,  and  hating  each 
other,  and  despising  ourselves?  And  then  the 
little  lives  cut  relentlessly  short,  how  does  that 
fit  in?  And  even  when  the  life  is  prolonged, 
one  becomes  a  puckered,  winking  doddering,  old 
thing,  stiff  and  brittle,  disgraceful  and  humili- 
ated, and,  what  is  worse  than  anything,  feeling 
so  young  and  sensible  inside  the  crazy  machine. 
If  we  knew  that  it  was  all  going  to  help  us  some- 
where, sometime,  no  matter  how  far  off,  to  be 
strong  and  cheerful  and  brave  and  kind,  how 
easy  to  bear  it  all! 

But  in  spite  of  everything,  how  one  enjoys  it 
all;  how  interesting  and  absorbing  it  all  is! 
Wherever  one  turns,  there  are  delicious  things 
to  see,  from  the  aconite  with  its  yellow  head  and 
its  green  collar  in  the  bare  shrubbery,  to  the 
streak  of  sunshine  on  the  plain  with  the  great 
rays  thrust  downwards  from  the  hidden  sun, 
making  the  world  an  enchanted  place.  And 
all  the  curious,  fantastic,  charming  people  that 
one  meets,  from  the  boy  sitting  on  the  cart-shaft, 
with  all  sorts  of  old  love-histories  hinted  in  his 
clear  skin  and  large  eye,  to  the  wizened  la- 
bourer in  his  quaint-cut,  frowzy  clothes,  bill- 
hook in  hand,  a  symbol  of  the  patient  work  of 
the  world.  So  helpless  a  crowd,  so  patient  in 
trouble,  so  bewildered  as  to  the  meaning  of  it 


The  Goal  15 

all;  and  zigzagged  all  across  it,  in  nations,  in 
families,  in  individuals,  the  jagged  lines  of  evil, 
so  devastating,  so  horrible,  so  irremediable;  and 
even  worse  than  evil — which  has  at  least  some- 
thing lurid  and  fiery  about  it — the  dark,  slimy 
streaks  of  meanness  and  jealousy,  of  boredom 
and  ugliness,  which  seem  to  have  no  use  at  all 
but  to  make  things  move  heavily  and  obscurely, 
when  they  might  run  swift  and  bright. 

So  here  in  my  isle  of  silence,  between  fen  and 
fen,  under  the  spacious  sky,  I  want  to  try  an 
experiment — to  live  simply  and  honestly,  with- 
out indolence  or  haste,  neither  wasting  time 
nor  devouring  it,  not  refusing  due  burdens  but 
not  inventing  useless  ones,  not  secluding  myself 
in  a  secret  cell  of  solitude,  but  not  multiplying 
dull  and  futile  relations.  One  thing  I  may  say 
honestly  and  sincerely,  that  I  do  indeed  desire 
to  fulfil  the  Will  and  purpose  of  God  for  me,  if 
I  can  but  discern  it ;  for  that  there  is  a  great  will 
at  work  behind  it  all,  I  cannot  for  a  moment 
doubt;  nor  can  I  doubt  that  I  do  it,  with  many 
foolish  fears  and  delays,  and  shall  do  it  to  the 
end.  Why  it  is  that,  voyaging  thus  to  the  haven 
beneath  the  hill,  I  meet  such  adverse  breezes, 
such  headstrong  currents,  such  wrack  of  wind 
and  thwarting  wave,  I  know  not;  nor  what  that 
other  land  will  be  like,  if  indeed  I  sail  beyond  the 
sunset ;  but  that  a  home  awaits  me  and  all  man- 
kind I  believe,   of  which  this  quiet  house,  so 


16  The  Silent  Isle 

pleasantly  ordered,  among  its  old  trees  and  dewy 
pastures,  is  but  a  faint  sweet  symbol.  It  may  be 
that  I  shall  find  the  vision  that  I  desire;  or  it 
may  be  that  I  shall  but  fall  bleeding  among  the 
thorns  of  life;  who  can  tell? 

As  I  write,  I  see  the  pale  spring  sunset  fade 
between  the  tree-stems;  the  garden  glimmers  in 
the  dusk;  the  lights  peep  out  in  the  hamlet;  the 
birds  wing  their  way  home  across  the  calm  sky- 
spaces.  Even  now,  in  this  moment  of  ease  and 
security,  might  be  breathed  the  message  I  desire, 
as  the  earth  spins  and  whirls  across  the  infinite 
tracts  of  heaven,  from  the  great  tender  mind  of 
God.  But  if  not,  I  am  content.  For  this  one 
thing  I  hold  as  certain,  and  I  dare  not  doubt  it 
— that  there  is  a  Truth  behind  all  confusions  and 
errors;  a  goal  beyond  all  pilgrimages.  I  shall 
find  it,  I  shall  reach  it,  in  some  day  of  sudden 
glory,  of  hope  fulfilled  and  sorrow  ended;  and  no 
step  of  the  way  thither  will  be  wasted,  whether 
trodden  in  despair  and  weariness  or  in  elation 
and  delight ;  till  we  have  learned  not  to  fear,  not 
to  judge,  not  to  mistrust,  not  to  despise;  till  in  a 
moment  our  eyes  will  be  opened,  and  we  shall 
know  that  we  have  found  peace. 


II 


I  realised  a  little  while  ago  that  I  was  getting 
sadly  belated  in  the  matter  of  novel-reading.  I 
had  come  to  decline  on  a  few  old  favourites  and 
was  breaking  no  new  ground.  That  is  a  pro- 
vincial frame  of  mind,  just  as  when  a  man  begins 
to  discard  dressing  for  dinner,  and  can  endure 
nothing  but  an  old  coat  and  slippers.  It  is  easy 
to  think  of  it  as  unworldly,  peaceable,  philo- 
sophical; but  it  is  mere  laziness.  The  really  un- 
worldly philosopher  is  the  man  who  is  at  ease  in 
all  costumes  and  at  home  in  all  companies. 

I  did  not  take  up  my  novel-reading  in  a  light 
spirit  or  for  mere  diversion.  To  begin  a  new 
novel  is  for  me  like  staying  at  a  strange  house; 
I  am  bewildered  and  discomposed  by  the  new 
faces,  by  the  hard  necessity  of  making  the  ac- 
quaintance of  all  the  new  people,  and  in  deter- 
mining their  merits  and  their  demerits.  But  I 
was  bent  on  more  serious  things  still.  I  knew 
that  it  is  the  writers  of  romances,  and  not  the 
historians  or  the  moralists,  who  are  the  real 
critics  and  the  earnest  investigators  of  life  and 
living.  There  may  be  at  the  present  day  few 
2  l7 


18  The  Silent  Isle 

subtle  psychologists  or  surpassing  idealists  at 
work  writing  novels,  and  still  fewer  great  artists; 
but  for  a  man  to  get  out  of  the  way  of  reading 
contemporary  fiction  is  not  only  a  disease,  it  is 
almost  a  piece  of  moral  turpitude — or  at  best  a 
sign  of  lassitude,  stupidity,  and  Toryism;  be- 
cause it  means  that  one's  mind  is  made  up  and 
that  one  has  some  dull  theory  which  life  and  the 
thoughts  of  others  may  confirm  if  they  will,  but 
must  not  modify:  from  which  deadly  kind  of 
incrustation  may  common-sense  and  human 
interest  deliver  us. 

It  is  a  matter  of  endless  debate  whether  a 
novel  should  have  an  ethical  purpose,  or  whether 
it  should  merely  be  an  attempt  to  present  beauti- 
fully any  portion  of  truth  clearly  perceived, 
faithfully  observed,  delicately  grouped,  and  ar- 
tistically isolated.  In  the  latter  case,  say  the 
realists,  whatever  the  subject,  the  incident,  the 
details  may  be,  the  novel  will  possess  exactly 
the  same  purpose  that  underlies  things,  no  more 
and  no  less;  and  the  purpose  may  be  trusted  to 
look  after  itself. 

The  other  theory  is  that  the  novelist  should 
have  a  definite  motive;  that  he  should  have  a 
case  which  he  is  trying  to  prove,  a  warning  he 
wishes  to  enforce,  an  end  which  he  desires  to 
realise.  The  fact  that  Dickens  and  Charles 
Reade  had  philanthropic  motives  of  social  re- 
form, and  wished  to  improve  the   condition  of 


The  Passion  of  Love  19 

schools,  workhouses,  lunatic  asylums,  and  gaols, 
is  held  to  justify  from  the  moral  point  of  view 
such  novels  as  Nicholas  Nickleby,  Oliver  Twist, 
Hard  Cash,  and  //  is  Never  too  Late  to  Mend.  And 
from  the  moral  point  of  view  these  books  are  en- 
tirely justified,  because  they  did  undoubtedly 
interest  a  large  number  of  people  in  such  subjects 
who  would  not  have  been  interested  by  ser- 
mons or  blue-books.  These  books  quickened 
the  emotions  of  ordinary  people  on  the  subject; 
and  public  sentiment  is  of  course  the  pulse  of 
legislation. 

Whether  the  philanthropic  motive  injured  the 
books  from  the  artistic  point  of  view  is  another 
question.  It  undoubtedly  injured  them  exactly 
in  proportion  as  the  philanthropic  motive  led  the 
writers  to  distort  or  to  exaggerate  the  truth.  It 
is  perfectly  justifiable,  artistically,  to  lay  the 
scene  of  a  novel  in  a  workhouse  or  a  gaol,  but  if 
the  humanitarian  impulse  leads  to  any  embroid- 
ery of  or  divergence  from  the  truth,  the  novel 
is  artistically  injured,  because  the  selection  and 
grouping  of  facts  should  be  guided  by  artistic 
and  not  by  philanthropic  motives. 

Now  the  one  emotion  which  plays  a  prominent 
part  in  most  romances  is  the  passion  of  love,  and 
it  is  interesting  to  observe  that  even  this  motive 
is  capable  of  being  treated  from  the  philan- 
thropic as  well  as  from  the  artistic  point  of  view. 
In  a  book  which  is  now  perhaps  unduly  neg- 


20  The  Silent  Isle 

lected,  from  the  fact  that  it  has  a  markedly 
early  Victorian  flavour,  Charles  Kingsley's 
Yeast,  there  is  a  distinct  attempt  made  to  fuse 
the  two  motives.  The  love  of  Lancelot  for  Arge- 
mone  is  depicted  both  in  the  artistic  and  in  the 
philanthropic  light.  The  passion  of  the  lover 
throbs  furiously  through  the  odd  weltering 
current  of  social  problems  indicated,  as  a  stream 
in  lonely  meadows  may  be  seen  and  heard  to 
pulsate  at  the  beat  of  some  neighbouring  mill 
which  it  serves  to  turn.  Yet  the  philanthropic 
motive  is  there,  in  that  love  is  depicted  as  a  re- 
deeming power,  a  cure  for  selfishness,  a  balm 
for  unrest;  and  the  artistic  impulse  finally 
triumphs  in  the  death  of  Argemone  unwedded. 

In  the  hands  of  women- writers,  love  naturally 
tends  to  be  depicted  from  the  humanitarian 
point  of  view.  It  is  the  one  matchless  gift 
which  the  woman  has  to  offer,  the  supreme  op- 
portunity of  exercising  influence,  the  main 
chance  of  what  is  clumsily  called  self -effectuation. 
The  old  proverb  says  that  all  women  are  match- 
makers; and  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  goes  further  and 
maintains  that  they  act  from  a  kind  of  predatory 
instinct,  however  much  that  instinct  may  be 
concealed  or  glorified. 

Now  there  was  one  great  woman-writer,  Char- 
lotte Bronte,  to  whom  it  was  given  to  treat  of 
love  from  the  artistic  side.  She  has  been  accused 
of  making  her  heroines,   Jane  Eyre,    Caroline 


Love  from  the  Artistic  Side     21 

Helstone,  Lucy  Snowe,  too  submissive,  too  grate- 
ful for  the  gift  of  a  man's  love.  They  forgive 
deceit,  rebuffs,  severity,  coldness,  with  a  sur- 
passing meekness.  But  it  is  here  that  the  ar- 
tistic quality  really  emerges;  these  beautiful, 
stainless  hearts  are  preoccupied  with  what  they 
receive  rather  than  with  what  they  give.  In-that 
crude,  ingenuous  book  The  Professor,  the  hero, 
who  is  a  good  instance  of  how  Charlotte  Bronte 
confused  rigidity  of  nature  with  manliness,  sur- 
prised by  an  outbreak  of  passionate  emotion  on 
the  part  of  his  quiet  and  self-contained  wife,  and 
still  more  surprised  by  its  sudden  quiescence,  asks 
her  what  has  become  of  her  emotion  and  where 
it  is  gone.  "I  do  not  know  where  it  is  gone," 
says  the  girl,  "but  I  know  that  whenever  it  is 
wanted  it  will  come  back."  That  is  a  noble 
touch.  It  may  be  true  that  Paul  Emmanuel  and 
Robert  Moore  cling  too  closely  to  the  idea  of 
rewarding  their  humble  mistresses,  after  testing 
them  harshly  and  even  brutally,  with  the  gift  of 
their  love — though  even  this  humility  has  a 
touching  quality  of  beauty;  but  the  supreme 
lover,  Mr.  Rochester,  who,  in  spite  of  his  ridicu- 
lous affectations,  his  grotesque  hauteurs,  his  im- 
possible theatricality,  is  a  figure  of  flesh  and 
blood,  is  absorbed  in  his  passion  in  a  way  that 
shows  the  fire  leaping  on  the  innermost  altar. 
The  irresistible  appeal  of  the  book  to  the  heart  is 
due  to   the  fact  that  Jane  Eyre  never  seemed 


22  The  Silent  Isle 

conscious  of  what  she  is  giving,  but  only  of 
what  she  is  receiving ;  and  it  is  this  that  makes 
her  gift  so  regal,  so  splendid  a  thing. 

Side  by  side  with  this  book  I  would  set  a  recent 
work,  Miss  Cholmondeley  's  Prisoners.  Fine  and 
noble  as  the  book  is  in  many  ways,  it  is  yet  viti- 
ated by  the  sense  of  the  value  of  the  gift  of  love 
from  the  woman 's  point  of  view.  Love  is  there 
depicted  as  the  one  redeeming  and  transform- 
ing power  in  the  world.  But  in  order  to  prove 
the  thesis,  the  two  chief  characters  among  the 
men  of  the  book,  Wentworth  and  Lord  Lossie- 
mouth, are  not,  like  Mr.  Rochester,  strong  men 
disfigured  by  violent  faults,  but  essentially 
worthless  persons,  one  the  slave  of  an  old-maidish 
egotism  and  the  other  of  a  frank  animalism. 
The  result  in  both  cases  is  an  experimentum  in 
corpore  vili.  The  authoress,  instead  of  presiding 
over  her  creations  like  a  little  Deity,  is  a  strong 
partisan;  and  the  purpose  seems  to  be  to  bring 
out  more  clearly  the  priceless  nature  of  the  gift 
which  comes  near  their  hand.  No  one  would 
dispute  the  position  that  love  is  a  purifying  and 
transforming  power;  but  love,  conscious  of  its 
worth,  loses  the  humility  and  the  unselfishness  in 
which  half  its  power  lies.  Even  Magdalen,  the 
finest  character  in  the  book,  is  not  free  from  a 
quality  of  condescension.  In  the  great  love- 
scene  where  she  accepts  Lord  Lossiemouth,  she 
comforts  him  by  saying,   "You  have  not  only 


Unquestioning  Love  23 

come  back  to  me.  You  have  come  back  to  your- 
self. "  That  is  a  false  touch,  because  it  has  a 
flavour  of  superiority  about  it.  It  reminds  one 
of  the  lover  in  The  Princess  lecturing  the  hapless 
Ida  from  his  bed-pulpit,  and  saying,  "Blame 
not  thyself  too  much,"  and  "Dearer  thou  for 
faults  lived  over."  One  cannot  imagine  Jane 
Eyre  saying  to  Mr.  Rochester  that  he  had  come 
back  to  himself  through  loving  her.  It  just 
detracts  at  the  supreme  moment  from  the  gen- 
erosity of  the  scene ;  it  has  the  accent  of  the 
priestess,  not  of  the  true  lover;  and  thus  at  the 
moment  when  one  longs  to  be  in  the  very  white- 
heat  of  emotion,  one  is  subtly  aware  of  an  im- 
proving hand  that  casts  water  upon  the  flame. 

The  love  that  lives  in  art  is  the  love  of  Pen- 
elope and  Antigone,  of  Cordelia  and  Desdemona 
and  Imogen,  of  Enid,  of  Mrs.  Browning,  among 
women;  and  among  men,  the  love  of  Dante,  of 
Keats,  of  the  lover  of  Maud,  of  Pere  Goriot,  of 
Robert  Browning. 

It  is  the  unreasoning,  unquestioning  love  of  a 
man  for  a  woman  or  a  woman  for  a  man,  just  as 
they  are,  for  themselves  only;  "because  it  was 
you  and  me, "  as  Montaigne  says.  Not  a  respect 
for  good  qualities,  a  mere  admiration  for  beauty, 
a  perception  of  strength  or  delicacy,  but  a  sort 
of  predestined  unity  of  spirit  and  body,  an  inner 
and  instinctive  congeniality,  a  sense  of  supreme 
need  and  nearness,  which  has  no  consciousness 


24  The  Silent  Isle 

of  raising  or  helping  or  forgiving  about  it,  but 
is  rather  an  imperative  desire  for  surrender,  for 
sharing,  for  serving.  Thus,  in  love,  faults  and 
weaknesses  are  not  things  to  be  mended  or  over- 
looked, but  opportunities  of  lavish  generosity. 
Sacrifice  is  not  only  not  a  pain,  but  the  deepest 
and  acutest  pleasure  possible.  Love  of  this 
kind  has  nothing  of  the  tolerance  of  friendship 
about  it,  the  process  of  addition  and  subtraction, 
the  weighing  of  net  results,  though  that  can  pro- 
vide a  sensible  and  happy  partnership  enough. 
And  thus  when  an  author  has  grace  and  power 
to  perceive  such  a  situation,  no  further  motive 
or  purpose  is  needed;  indeed  the  addition  of  any 
such  motive  merely  defames  and  tarnishes  the 
quality  of  the  divine  gift. 

It  is  not  to  be  pretended  that  all  human  beings 
have  the  gift  of  loving  so.  To  love  perfectly  is  a 
matter  of  genius ;  it  may  be  worth  while  to  depict 
other  sorts  of  love,  for  it  has  infinite  gradations 
and  nuances.  One  of  the  grievous  mistakes  that 
the  prophets  and  prophetesses  of  love  make  is 
that  they  tend  to  speak  as  if  only  some  coldness 
and  hardness  of  nature,  which  could  be  dispensed 
with  at  will  or  by  effort,  holds  men  and  women 
back  from  the  innermost  relationship.  It  is  the 
same  mistake  as  that  made  by  many  preachers 
who  speak  as  if  the  moral  sense  was  equally 
developed  in  all,  or  required  only  a  little  effort 
of  the  will.    But  a  man  or  a  woman  may  be  quite 


The  Gift  of  Love  25 

able  to  perceive  the  nobility,  the  solemn  splendour 
of  a  perfect  love,  and  yet  be  incapable  of  either 
feeling  or  inspiring  it.  The  possession  of  such  a 
gift  is  a  thing  to  thank  God  for;  the  absence  of 
it  is  not  a  thing  to  be  shrewishly  condemned. 
The  power  is  not  often  to  be  found  in  combina- 
tion with  high  intellectual  or  artistic  gifts. 
There  is  a  law  of  compensation  in  human  nature, 
but  there  is  also  a  law  of  limitations;  and  this 
it  is  both  foolish  and  cowardly  to  ignore. 

When  one  comes  to  form  such  a  list  as  I  have 
tried  to  do  of  great  lovers  in  literature  and  life, 
it  is  surprising  and  rather  distressing  to  find,  after 
all,  how  difficult  it  is  to  make  such  a  list  at  all. 
It  is  easier  to  make  a  list  of  women  who  have 
loved  perfectly  than  a  list  of  men.  Two  rather 
painful  considerations  arise.  Is  it  because,  after 
all,  it  is  so  rare,  so  almost  abnormal  an  experi- 
ence for  one  to  love  purely,  passionately,  and 
permanently,  that  the  difficulty  of  making  such 
a  list  arises?  There  are  plenty  of  books,  both 
imaginative  and  biographical,  to  choose  from,  and 
yet  the  perfect  companionship  seems  very  rare. 
Or  is  it  that  we  nowadays  exaggerate  the  whole 
matter?  That  would  be  a  conclusion  to  which 
I  would  not  willingly  come;  but  it  is  quite  clear 
that  we  have  transcendentalised  the  power  of 
love  very  much  of  late.  Is  this  due  to  the  im- 
mense flood  of  romances  that  have  overwhelmed 
our  literature?    Does  love  really  play  so  large  a 


26  The  Silent  Isle 

part  in  people's  lives  as  romances  would  have 
us  think?  Or  do  the  immense  number  of  ro- 
mances rather  show  that  love  does  really  play 
a  greater  part  than  anything  else  in  our  lives? 
The  transcendental  conception  of  love  has 
found  a  high  and  passionate  expression  in  the 
sonnets  of  Rossetti,  yet  all  that  we  know  of 
Rossetti  would  seem  to  prove  that  in  his  case 
it  was  actual  rather  than  transcendental ;  and  he 
is  to  be  classed  in  the  matter  of  love  rather 
among  its  voluptuaries  and  slaves  than  among 
its  true  and  harmonious  exponents.  I  am  dis- 
posed to  think  that  with  men,  at  all  events, 
or  at  least  with  Englishmen  of  the  present  day, 
love  is  rather  a  bewildering  episode  than  a  guid- 
ing principle;  and  that  some  of  the  happiest 
alliances  have  been  those  in  which  passion  has 
tranquilly  transformed  itself  into  a  true  and 
gentle  companionship.  This  would  seem  to 
prove  that  love  was  as  a  rule  a  physical  rather 
than  a  spiritual  passion,  cutting  across  life  rather 
than  flowing  in  its  channels. 

And  then,  too,  the  further  consideration  inter- 
venes: Can  any  one,  in  reflecting  upon  the  in- 
stances of  great  and  loving  relationships  that 
have  come  within  the  range  of  his  experience, 
name  a  single  case  in  which  a  deep  passion  has 
ever  been  conceived  and  consummated,  without 
the  existence  of  physical  charm  of  some  kind  in 
the  woman  who  has  been  the  object  of  the  pas- 


Love  and  Passion  27 

sion?  I  do  not,  of  course,  limit  charm  to  regular 
and  conventional  beauty.  But  I  cannot  myself 
recall  a  single  instance  of  such  a  passion  being 
evoked  by  a  woman  destitute  of  physical 
attractiveness.  The  charm  may  be  that  of 
voice,  of  glance,  of  bearing,  of  gesture,  but  the 
desirable  element  is  always  there  in  some  form 
or  other. 

I  have  known  women  of  wit,  of  intellect,  of 
sympathy,  of  delicate  perception,  of  loyalty,  of 
passionate  affectionateness,  who  yet  have  missed 
the  joy  of  wedded  love  from  the  absence  of  physi- 
cal charm.  Indeed,  to  make  love  beautiful,  one 
has  to  conceive  of  it  as  exhibited  in  creatures  of 
youth  and  grace  like  Romeo  and  Juliet;  and  to 
connect  the  pretty  endearments  of  love  with 
awkward,  ugly,  ungainly  persons  has  something 
grotesque  and  even  profane  about  it.  But  if  love 
were  the  transcendental  thing  that  it  is  supposed 
to  be,  if  it  were  within  reach  of  every  hand, 
physical  characteristics  would  hardly  affect  the 
question.  I  wish  that  some  of  the  passionate 
interpreters  of  love  would  make  a  work  of  imagi- 
nation that  should  render  with  verisimilitude  the 
love-affair  of  two  absolutely  grotesque  and  mis- 
shapen persons,  without  any  sense  of  incongruity 
or  absurdity.  I  should  be  loath  to  say  that  love 
depends  upon  physical  characteristics;  but  I 
think  it  must  be  confessed  that  impassioned  love 
does    so   depend.      A    woman  without  physical 


28  The  Silent  Isle 

attractiveness,  but  with  tenderness,  loyalty, 
and  devotion,  may  arrive  at  plenty  of  happy 
relationships;  she  may  be  trusted,  confided  in, 
adored  by  young  and  old;  but  of  the  redeeming 
and  regenerating  love  that  comes  with  marriage 
she  may  have  no  chance  at  all.  It  is  a  terrible 
question  to  ask,  but  what  chance  has  love  against 
eczema?  And  yet  eczema  may  coexist  with  every 
mental  and  spiritual  grace  in  the  world.  In  this 
case  it  is  evident  that  the  modern  transcendental 
theory  of  love  crumbles  away  altogether,  if  it 
is  at  the   mercy  of  a  physical  condition. 

The  truth  is  that,  like  all  the  joys  of  humanity, 
love  is  unequally  distributed,  and  that  it  is  a 
thing  which  no  amount  of  desire  or  admiration 
or  hope  can  bring  about,  unless  it  is  bestowed. 
Even  in  the  case  of  the  faint-hearted  lover,  so 
mercilessly  lashed  in  Prisoners,  who  will  pay  a 
call  to  see  the  beloved,  but  will  not  take  a  rail- 
way journey  for  the  same  object,  is  it  not  the 
physical  vitality  that  is  deficient?  I  do  not 
quarrel  with  the  transcendental  treatment  of 
love;  I  only  say  that  if  this  is  accomplished  with 
a  burning  scorn  and  contempt  for  those  who 
cannot  pursue  it,  it  becomes  at  once  a  pharisaical 
and  bitter  thing.  No  religion  was  ever  propa- 
gated by  scolding  backsliders  or  contemning  the 
weak ;  no  chivalry  was  ever  worth  the  name  that 
did  not  stand  for  a  desire  to  do  battle  only  with 
the  strong. 


Transcendental  Love  29 

The  genius  of  Charlotte  Bronte  consists  in  the 
fact  that  she  makes  love  so  splendid  and  glori- 
fying a  thing,  and  that  she  does  not  waste 
her  powder  and  shot  upon  the  poor  in  spirit. 
The  loveless  man  or  woman,  after  reading  her 
book,  may  say,  "What  is  this  great  thing  that  I 
have  somehow  missed?  Is  it  possible  that  it  may 
be  waiting  somewhere  even  for  me?"  And  then 
such  as  these  may  grow  to  scan  the  faces  of 
their  fellow-travellers  in  hope  and  wonder.  In 
such  a  mood  as  this  does  love  grow,  not  under  a 
brisk  battery  of  slaps  for  being  what,  after  all, 
God  seems  to  have  meant  us  to  be.  There  are 
many  men  and  women  nowadays  who  must  face 
the  fact  that  they  are  not  likely  to  be  brought 
into  contact  with  transcendental  passion.  It  is 
for  them  to  decide  whether  they  will  or  can  ac- 
cept some  lower  form  of  love,  some  congenial 
companionship,  some  sort  of  easy  commercial 
union.  If  they  cannot,  the  last  thing  that  they 
should  do  is  to  repine;  they  ought  rather  to 
organise  their  lives  upon  the  best  basis  possible. 
All  is  not  lost  if  love  be  missed.  They  may  pre- 
pare themselves  to  be  worthy  if  the  great  ex- 
perience comes;  but  the  one  thing  in  the  world 
that  cannot  be  done  from  a  sense  of  duty  is  to 
fall  in  love;  and  if  love  be  so  mighty  and  tran- 
scendent a  thing  it  cannot  be  captured  like  an 
insect  with  a  butterfly-net.  The  more  tran- 
scendental it  is  held  to  be,  the  greater  should  be 


30  The  Silent  Isle 

the  compassion  of  its  interpreters  for  those  who 
have  not  seen  it.  It  is  not  those  who  fail  to 
gain  it  that  should  be  scorned,  but  only  the 
strong  man  who  deliberately,  for  prudence  and 
comfort's  sake,  refuses  it  and  puts  it  aside.  It 
is  our  great  moral  failure  nowadays  that  legis- 
lation, education,  religion,  social  reform  are  all 
occupied  in  eradicating  the  faults  of  the  weak 
rather  than  in  attacking  the  faults  of  the  strong ; 
and  the  modern  interpreters  of  love  are  following 
in  the  same  poor  groove. 

If  love  were  so  omnipotent,  so  divine  a  thing, 
we  should  have  love  stories  proving  the  truth 
and  worth  of  alliances  between  an  Earl  and  a 
kitchen-maid,  between  a  Duchess  and  a  day- 
labourer;  but  no  attempt  is  made  to  upset  con- 
ventional traditions  which  are  tamely  regarded 
as  insuperable.  "Let  me  not  to  the  marriage  of 
true  minds  admit  impediment,"  said  Shake- 
speare; but  who  experiments  in  such  ways,  who 
dares  to  write  of  them?  We  are  still  hopelessly 
feudal  and  fastidious.  "Such  unions  do  not  do," 
we  say ;  "  they  land  people  in  such  awkward  situa- 
tions."  Hazlitt's  Liber  Amoris  is  read  with 
disgust,  because  the  girl  was  a  lodging-house  ser- 
vant ;  but  if  Hazlitt  had  abandoned  himself  to  a 
passion  for  a  girl  of  noble  birth,  the  story  would 
have  been  deemed  romantic  enough.  Thus 
it  would  seem  that  below  the  transcendentalism 
of  modern  love  lies  a  rich  vein  of  snobbishness. 


Modern  Love  31 

With  Charlotte  Bronte  the  triumph  over  social 
conditions  in  Jane  Eyre,  and  even  in  Shirley,  is 
one  of  the  things  that  makes  the  story  glow  and 
thrill ;  but  the  glow  of  the  peerage  has  to  be  cast 
in  Prisoners  over  the  detestable  Lossiemouth, 
that  one  may  feel  that  after  all  the  heroine  has 
done  well  for  herself  from  a  social  point  of  view. 
If  social  conditions  are  indeed  a  barrier,  let 
them  be  treated  with  a  sort  of  noble  shame,  as 
the  love  of  the  keeper  Tregarva  for  the  squire's 
daughter  Honoria  is  treated  in  Yeast;  let  them 
not  be  fastidiously  ignored  over  the  teacups  at 
the  Hall. 

Love  is  a  mighty  thing,  a  deep  secret;  but  if  we 
dare  to  write  of  it,  let  us  face  the  truth  about  it; 
let  us  confess  boldly  that  it  is  limited  by  physical 
and  social  conditions,  even  though  that  involves 
a  loss  of  its  transcendent  might.  But  let  us  not 
meekly  accept  these  narrowing  axioms,  and  while 
we  dig  a  neat  canal  for  the  emotion  with  one 
hand,  claim  with  the  other  that  the  peaceful 
current  has  all  the  splendour  and  volume  of  the 
resistless  river  foaming  from  rock  to  rock,  and 
leaping  from  the  sheltered  valley  to  the  bound- 
less sea. 


Ill 


People  often  talk  as  if  human  beings  were 
crushed  by  sorrows  and  misfortunes  and  tragic 
events.  It  is  not  so !  We  are  crushed  by  tempera- 
ment. Just  as  Dr.  Johnson  said  about  writing, 
that  no  man  was  ever  written  down  but  by  him- 
self, so  we  are  the  victims  not  of  circumstances 
but  of  disposition.  Those  who  succumb  to  tragic 
events  are  those  who,  like  Mrs.  Gummidge,  feel 
them  more  than  other  people.  The  characters 
that  break  down  under  brutalising  influences, 
evil  surroundings,  monotonous  toil,  are  those 
neurotic  temperaments  which  under  favourable 
circumstances  would  have  been  what  is  called 
artistic,  who  depend  upon  stimulus  and  excite- 
ment, upon  sunshine  and  pleasure.  Of  course,  a 
good  deal  of  what,  in  our  ignorance  of  the  work- 
ing of  psychological  laws,  we  are  accustomed  to 
call  chance  or  luck,  enters  into  the  question. 
Ill-health,  dull  surroundings,  loveless  lives  cause 
people  to  break  down  in  the  race,  who  in 
averagely  prosperous  circumstances  might  have 
lived  pleasantly  and  reputably.  But  the  deeper 
we  plunge  into  nature,  the  deeper  we  explore 

32 


Zest  33 

life,  the  more  immutable  we  find  the  grip  of 
law.  What  could  appear  to  be  a  more  fortuitous 
spectacle  of  collision  and  confusion  than  a  great 
ocean  breaker  thundering  landwards,  with  a 
wrack  of  flying  spray  and  tossing  crests?  Yet 
every  smallest  motion  of  every  particle  is  the 
working  out  of  laws  which  go  far  back  into  the 
dark  asons  of  creation.  Given  the  precise  con- 
ditions of  wind  and  mass  and  gravitation,  a 
mathematician  could  work  out  and  predict  the 
exact  motion  of  every  liquid  atom.  Just  so  and 
not  otherwise  could  it  move.  It  is  as  certain 
that  every  minute  psychological  process,  all  the 
phenomena  that  we  attribute  to  will  and  pur- 
pose and  motive,  are  just  as  inevitable  and 
immutable. 

The  other  day  I  went  by  appointment  to  call 
on  an  elderly  lady  of  my  acquaintance,  the 
widow  of  a  country  squire,  who  has  settled  in 
London,  on  a  small  jointure,  in  an  inconspicuous 
house  in  a  dull  street.  She  has  always  been  a  very 
active  woman.  As  the  wife  of  a  country  gentle- 
man she  was  a  cordial  hostess,  loving  to  fill  the 
house  with  visitors;  and  in  her  own  village  she 
was  a  Lady  Bountiful  of  the  best  kind,  the  eager 
friend  and  adviser  of  every  family  in  the  place. 
Now  she  is  old  and  to  a  great  extent  invalided. 
But  she  is  vigorous,  upright,  dignified,  impera- 
tive, affectionate,  with  a  stately  carriage  and  a 
sanguine  complexion.    She  is  always  full  to  the 

3 


34  The  Silent  Isle 

brim  of  interest  and  liveliness.  She  carries  on  a 
dozen  small  enterprises;  she  is  at  daggers  drawn 
with  some  of  her  relations,  and  the  keen  partisan 
of  others.  Everything  is  "astonishing"  and 
"wonderful"  and  "extraordinary"  that  happens 
to  her ;  and  it  is  an  unceasing  delight  to  hear  her 
describe  the  smallest  things,  her  troubles  with 
her  servants,  her  family  differences,  the  meetings 
of  the  societies  she  attends,  the  places  she  visits. 
Her  talk  is  always  full  of  anecdotes  about  mys- 
terious people  whose  names  are  familiar  to  me 
from  her  talk  but  with  whom  I  have  never  come 
into  contact.  It  is  impossible  to  forecast  what 
circumstances  may  fill  her  with  excitement  and 
delight.  She  will  give  you  a  dramatic  account  of 
a  skirmish  with  her  Vicar  about  some  incredibly 
trifling  matter,  or  describe  with  zest  how  she  un- 
veiled the  pretentious  machinations  of  some  un- 
desirable relative.  She  is  full  of  malice,  anger, 
uncharitableness,  indignation,  but,  on  the  other 
hand,  she  is  just  as  full  of  compassion,  goodwill, 
admiration  and  enthusiasm.  Every  one  she 
knows  is  either  perfectly  delightful  or  else  en- 
tirely intolerable;  and  thus  she  converts  what 
would  seem  to  many  people  a  confined  and  nar- 
row sphere  of  action  into  a  stormy  and  generous 
clash  of  great  forces. 

On  this  particular  occasion  she  kept  me  waiting 
for  a  few  minutes,  and  then  darted  into  the  room 
with  an  eager  apology.     She  had  just  had,  she 


Zest 


00 


said,  very  bad  news.  Her  second  son,  a  soldier 
in  India,  had  died  suddenly  of  fever,  and  the 
news  had  reached  her  only  that  morning.  She  is 
a  devoted  mother,  and  she  wept  frankly  and 
unashamedly  as  she  told  me  the  sad  details. 
Her  grief  was  evidently  deep  and  profound ;  and 
yet,  strange  to  say,  I  found  myself  realising  that 
this  event,  entailing  peculiarly  tragic  conse- 
quences which  I  need  not  here  define,  was  to  the 
gallant  old  lady,  in  spite  of,  or  rather  in  conse- 
quence of,  her  grief,  a  thing  which  heightened 
the  values  of  existence,  put  a  fire  into  her  pulses, 
and  quickened  the  sense  of  living.  It  was  not 
that  she  did  not  feel  the  loss ;  she  suffered  acutely ; 
but  for  all  that,  it  was  an  experience  of  a  stirring 
kind,  and  her  indomitable  appetite  for  sen- 
sation was  fed  and  sustained  by  it.  She  was 
full  of  schemes  for  the  widow  and  children;  she 
was  melted  with  heart-felt  grief  for  them ;  but  I 
perceived  that  she  was  in  no  way  dejected  by  the 
experience;  it  called  all  her  powers,  even  the 
power  of  bearing  grief,  into  play ;  and  the  drain- 
ing of  the  bitter  cup  was  more  congenial  to  her 
than  inactive  monotony.  It  gave  me  a  strong 
sense  of  her  vitality,  and  I  felt  that  it  was  a 
really  splendid  thing  to  be  able  to  approach  a 
grief  with  this  fiery  zest,  rather  than  to  collapse 
into  a  dreary  and  hysterical  depression.  There 
were  fifty  things  she  could  do,  and  she  meant 
to  do  them  every  one,  and  secretly  exulted  in 


36  The  Silent  Isle 

the  task.  It  was  even,  I  felt,  a  distinct  pleasure 
to  her  to  describe  the  melancholy  circumstances 
of  the  event  in  the  fullest  detail.  It  was  not  a 
pensive  or  luxurious  emotion,  but  a  tumult  of 
vehement  feeling,  bearing  the  bark  of  the  soul 
triumphantly  along.  She  would  have  been  dis- 
tressed and  even  indignant  if  I  had  revealed  my 
thoughts ;  but  the  fact  was  there  for  all  that ;  in- 
stead of  brooding  or  fretting  over  small  affairs, 
she  was  face  to  face  with  one  of  the  great  un- 
answerable, unfathomable  facts  of  life,  and  her 
spirit  drank  in  the  solemnity,  the  greatness  of 
it,  as  a  flower  after  a  drought  drinks  in  the 
steady  plunging  rain. 

I  will  not  say  that  this  is  the  secret  of  life; 
for  it  is  a  faculty  of  temperament,  and  cannot  be 
acquired.  But  I  reflected  how  much  finer  and 
stronger  it  was  than  my  own  tendency  to  be  be- 
wildered and  cowed  beneath  a  robust  stroke  of 
fate.  I  felt  that  the  thing  one  ought  to  aim  at 
doing  was  to  look  experience  steadily  in  the  face, 
whether  sweet  or  bitter,  to  interrogate  it  firmly, 
to  grasp  its  significance.  If  one  cowers  away 
from  it,  if  one  tries  to  distract  and  beguile  the 
soul,  to  forget  the  grief  in  feverish  activity,  well, 
one  may  succeed  in  dulling  the  pain  as  by  some 
drug  or  anodyne;  but  the  lesson  of  life  is  there- 
by deferred.  Why  should  one  so  faint-heartedly 
persist  in  making  choice  of  experiences,  in  wel- 
coming what  is  pleasant,  what  feeds  our  vanity 


Endurance  37 

and  self-satisfaction,  what  gives  one,  like  the 
rich  fool,  the  sense  of  false  security  of  goods 
stored  up  for  the  years?  We  are  set  in  life  to 
feel  insecure,  or  at  all  events  to  gain  stability 
and  security  of  soul,  not  to  prop  up  our  failing 
and  timid  senses  upon  the  pillows  of  wealth  and 
ease  and  circumstance.  The  man  whom  I  en- 
tirely envy  is  the  man  who  walks  into  the  dark 
valley  of  misfortune  or  sickness  or  grief,  or  the 
shadow  of  death,  with  a  curious  and  inexpressible 
zest  for  facing  and  interrogating  the  presences 
that  haunt  the  place.  For  a  man  who  does  this, 
his  memory  is  not  like  a  land  where  he  loves  to 
linger  upon  the  sunlit  ridges  of  happy  recollection, 
but  a  land  where  in  reflection  he  threads  in  back- 
ward thought  the  dark  vale,  the  miry  road,  the 
craggy  rift  up  which  he  painfully  climbed;  the 
optimism  that  hurries  with  averted  glance  past 
the  shadow  is  as  false  as  the  pessimism  that 
hurries  timidly  across  the  bright  and  flowery 
meadow.  The  more  we  realise  the  immutability 
of  our  lot,  the  more  grateful  we  become  for  our 
pains  as  well  as  for  our  delights.  If  we  have  still 
lives  to  live  and  regions  to  traverse,  after  our 
eyes  close  upon  the  world,  those  lives  and  those 
regions  may  be,  as  we  love  to  think,  tracts  of 
serener  happiness  and  more  equable  tranquillity. 
But  if  they  be  still  a  mixture,  such  as  we  here 
endure,  of  pain  and  pleasure,  then  our  aim  ought 
to  be  at  all  costs  to  learn  the  lesson  of  endurance; 


38  The  Silent  Isle 

or  rather,  if  we  hold  firmly  to  the  sense  of  law, 
minute,  pervading,  unalterable  law,  to  welcome 
every  step  we  make  in  the  direction  of  courage 
and  hopefulness.  In  the  midst  of  atrocious  sor- 
row and  suffering  there  is  no  sense  so  blessed  as 
the  sense  that  dawns  upon  the  suffering  heart 
that  it  can  indeed  endure  what  it  had  represented 
to  itself  as  unendurable,  and  that  however 
sharply  it  suffers,  there  is  still  an  inalienable 
residue  of  force  and  vitality  which  cannot  be 
exhausted. 


IV 


Such  a  perfect  day:  the  sky  cloudless;  sunlight 
like  pale  gold  or  amber;  soft  mists  in  the  dis- 
tance; a  delicate  air,  gently  stirred,  fresh,  with 
no  poisonous  nip  in  it.  I  knew  last  night  it 
would  be  fine,  for  the  gale  had  blown  itself  out, 
and  when  I  came  in  at  sunset  the  chimneys  and 
shoulders  of  the  Hall  stood  out  dark  against  the 
orange  glow.  The  beloved  house  seemed  to  wel- 
come me  back,  and  as  I  came  across  the  footpath, 
through  the  pasture,  I  saw  in  the  brightly-lighted 
kitchen  the  hands  of  some  one  whose  face  I  could 
not  see,  in  the  golden  circle  of  lamplight,  deftly 
moving,  preparing  something,  for  my  use  perhaps. 
Yet  for  all  that  I  am  ill  at  ease;  and  as  I 
walked  to-day,  far  and  fast  in  the  sun-warmed 
lanes,  my  thoughts  came  yapping  and  growling 
round  me  like  a  pack  of  curs — undignified, 
troublesome,  vexatious  thoughts;  I  chase  them 
away  for  a  moment,  and  next  moment  they  are 
snapping  at  my  heels.  Experiences  of  a  tragic 
quality,  however  depressing  they  may  be,  have 
a  vaguely  sustaining  power  about  them,  when 
they  close  in,  as  the  fat  bulls  of  Bashan  closed  in 

39 


40  The  Silent  Isle 

upon  the  Psalmist.  There  is  no  escape  then,  and 
the  matter  is  in  the  hands  of  God;  but  when 
many  dogs  have  come  about  one,  one  feels  that 
one  must  try  to  deal  with  the  situation  oneself; 
and  that  is  just  what  one  does  not  want  to  do. 

What  sort  of  dogs  are  they?  Well,  to-day  they 
are  things  like  this — an  angry  letter  from  an  old 
friend  to  whom  something  which  I  said  about 
him  was  repeated  by  a  busybody.  The  thing  was 
true  enough,  and  it  was  not  wrong  for  me  to 
say  it ;  but  that  it  should  be  repeated  with  a  deft 
and  offensive  twist  to  the  man  himself  is  the 
mischief.  I  cannot  deny  that  I  said  it,  and  I  can 
only  affirm  its  truth.  Was  it  friendly  to  say  it? 
says  my  correspondent.  Well,  I  don't  think  it 
was  unfriendly  as  I  said  it.  It  is  the  turn  given 
to  it  that  makes  it  seem  injurious;  and  yet  I  can- 
not deny  that  what  has  been  repeated  is  sub- 
stantially what  I  said.  Why  did  I  not  say  it  to 
him?  he  asks,  instead  of  saying  it  to  an  acquaint- 
ance. It  might,  he  goes  on,  have  been  conceiv- 
ably of  some  use  if  I  had  said  it  to  him,  but  it 
can  be  of  no  use  for  me  to  have  said  it  to  a  third 
person.  I  have  no  reply  to  this;  it  is  perfectly 
true.  But  I  do  not  go  in  for  pointing  out  my 
friends'  faults  to  them,  unless  they  ask  me  to  do 
so:  and  the  remark  in  question  was  just  one  of 
those  hasty,  unconsidered,  sweeping  little  judg- 
ments that  one  does  pass  in  conversation  about 
the  action  of  a  friend.     One  cannot — at  least  I 


Worries  41 

cannot — so  order  my  conversation  that  if  a  cas- 
ual criticism  is  repeated  without  qualification  to 
the  person  who  is  the  subject  of  it,  he  may  not 
be  pained  by  it.  The  repetition  of  it  in  all  its 
nakedness  makes  it  seem  deliberate,  when  it  is 
not  deliberate  at  all.  I  say  in  my  reply  frankly 
that  I  admire,  esteem,  and  love  my  friend, 
but  that  I  do  not  therefore  admire  his  faults.  I 
add  that  I  do  not  myself  mind  my  friends'  criticis- 
ing me,  so  long  as  they  do  not  do  it  to  my  face. 
But  I  am  aware  that,  for  all  my  frankness,  I  cut 
a  poor  figure  in  the  matter.  I  foresee  a  tiresome, 
useless  correspondence,  and  a  certain  inevitable 
coldness.  Then,  too,  I  must  write  a  disagreeable 
letter  to  the  man  who  has  repeated  my  critic- 
ism; and  he  will  reply,  quite  fairly,  that  I  ought 
not  to  have  said  it  if  I  did  not  mean  it,  and  if 
I  was  not  prepared  to  stand  by  it.  And  he  will 
be  annoyed  too,  because  he  will  not  see  that  he 
has  done  anything  that  he  ought  not  to  have 
done.  I  shall  say  that  I  shall  have  for  the  future 
to  be  careful  what  I  say  to  him,  and  he  will  reply 
that  he  quite  approves  of  my  decision,  and  that 
it  is  a  pity  I  have  not  always  acted  on  the  same 
principle;  and  he  will  have  a  detestable  species 
of  justice  on  his  side. 

Then  there  are  other  things  as  well.  There  is 
some  troublesome  legal  business,  arising  out  of 
a  quarrel  between  two  relations  of  mine  on  a 
question  of  some  property.    Whatever  I  decide, 


42  The  Silent  Isle 

some  one  will  be  vexed.  I  do  not  want  to  take 
any  part  in  the  matter  at  all,  and  the  only  reason 
I  do  it  is  because  I  have  been  appealed  to,  and 
there  does  not  seem  to  be  any  one  else  who  will 
do  it.  This  will  entail  a  quantity  of  correspond- 
ence and  some  visits  to  town,  because  of  the 
passion  that  people  have  for  interviews,  and  be- 
cause lawyers  love  delay,  since  it  is  a  profitable 
source  of  income  to  them.  In  this  case  the 
parties  in  the  dispute  are  women,  and  one  cannot 
treat  their  requests  with  the  same  bluntness  that 
one  treats  the  requests  of  men.  "I  should  feel 
so  much  more  happy, "  one  of  them  says,  "if  you 
could  just  run  up  and  discuss  the  matter  with  me ; 
it  is  so  much  more  satisfactory  than  a  letter." 
This  will  be  troublesome,  it  will  take  up  time,  it 
will  be  expensive,  and,  as  I  say,  I  shall  only 
succeed  in  vexing  one  of  the  claimants,  and 
possibly  both. 

Then,  again,  the  widow  of  an  old  friend,  lately 
dead,  asks  my  advice  about  publishing  a  book 
which  her  husband  has  left  unfinished.  I  do  not 
think  it  is  a  very  good  book,  and  certainly  not 
worth  publishing  on  its  merits.  But  the  widow 
feels  it  a  sacred  duty  to  give  it  to  the  world; 
she  seems,  too,  to  regard  it  as  a  sacred  duty  for 
me,  as  a  loyal  friend,  to  edit  the  book,  fill  up  the 
gaps,  and  see  it  through  the  press.  Then  I  shall 
be  held  responsible  for  its  publication,  and  the 
reviewers  will  say  that  it  is  not  worth  the  paper 


Worries  43 

it  is  printed  on — an  opinion  I  cannot  honestly 
contest. 

Another  trial  is  that  a  young  man,  whom  I  do 
not  know,  but  whose  father  was  a  friend  of  mine 
in  old  days,  writes  to  me  to  use  my  influence  that 
he  should  obtain  an  appointment.  He  says  that 
he  is  just  as  well  qualified  as  a  number  of  other 
applicants,  and  all  that  is  needed  is  that  I  should 
write  a  letter  to  an  eminent  man  whom  I  know, 
which  will  give  him  his  chance.  I  hate  to  do 
this ;  I  hate  to  use  private  friendship  in  order  that 
I  may  do  jobs  for  my  friends.  If  I  do  not  write 
the  required  letter,  the  young  man  will  think 
me  forgetful  of  the  old  ties ;  if  he  does  not  obtain 
the  appointment,  he  will  blame  me  for  not  act- 
ing energetically  enough.  If  he  does  obtain  it 
on  my  recommendation,  it  may  of  course  turn 
out  all  right;  but  if  he  does  not  show  himself 
fit  for  the  post,  I  shall  be  rightly  blamed  for 
recommending  him  on  insufficient  grounds;  and 
in  any  case  my  eminent  friend  will  think  me  an 
importunate  person. 

I  am  busy  just  now  on  a  book  of  my  own,  but 
all  these  things  force  me  to  put  my  work  aside, 
day  after  day.  Even  when  I  have  some  leisure 
hours  which  I  might  devote  to  my  own  work,  I 
cannot  attain  the  requisite  serenity  for  doing  it 
— I  cannot  get  these  vexatious  matters  out  of  my 
head;  and  there  are  other  matters,  too,  of  the 
same  kind  which  I  need  not  further  particularise. 


44  The  Silent  Isle 

Of  course  it  may  be  said  that  the  knot  is  best 
cut  by  refusing  to  have  anything  to  do  with  any 
of  these  things.  I  suppose  that  if  one  was  strong- 
minded  and  resolute  one  would  behave  like 
Gallio,  who  drove  the  disputants  from  his  judg- 
ment-seat. But  I  have  a  tenderness  for  these 
people,  and  a  certain  conscience  in  the  matter, 
so  that  I  do  not  feel  it  would  be  right  to  refuse. 
Yet  I  do  not  quite  know  upon  what  basis  I  feel 
that  there  is  a  duty  about  it.  I  do  not  under- 
take these  tasks  as  a  Christian.  The  only  pre- 
cedent that  I  can  find  in  the  Gospel  which  bears 
on  the  matter  would  seem  to  justify  my  refusing 
to  have  anything  to  do  with  it  all.  When  the 
two  men  came  to  Christ  about  a  question  of  an 
inheritance,  he  would  not  do  what  they  asked 
him.  He  said,  "Man,  who  made  me  a  judge  or 
a  divider  between  you?"  Again,  I  do  not  do  it 
as  a  gentleman,  because  there  is  no  question  of 
personal  honour  involved.  I  only  do  it,  I  think, 
because  I  do  not  like  refusing  to  do  what  I  am 
asked  to  do,  because  I  wish  to  please  people — 
a  muddled  sort  of  kindliness. 

But  the  whole  question  goes  deeper  than  that. 
I  suppose  that  tasks  such  as  these  fall  in  the  way 
of  all  human  beings,  whatever  their  motives  for 
undertaking  them  may  be.  How  can  one  do 
them,  and  yet  not  let  them  disturb  one's  tran- 
quillity? The  ordinary  moralist  says,  "  Do  what 
you  think  to  be  right,  and  never  mind  what 


Misunderstandings  45 

people  say  or  think."  But  unfortunately  I  do 
mind  very  much.  I  hate  coldnesses  and  mis- 
understandings. They  leave  me  with  a  sore  and 
sensitive  feeling  about  my  heart,  which  no 
amount  of  ingenious  argument  can  take  away. 
I  suppose  that  one  ought  to  conclude  that  these 
things  are  somehow  or  other  good  for  one,  that 
they  train  one  in  patience  and  wisdom.  But 
when,  as  is  the  case  with  all  these  episodes,  the 
original  dispute  ought  never  to  have  occurred; 
when  the  questions  at  issue  are  mean,  pitiful,  and 
sordid;  when,  if  the  people  concerned  were  only 
themselves  wise,  patient,  and  kind,  the  situation 
would  never  have  occurred,  what  then?  If  my 
acquaintance,  in  the  first  case,  had  not  taken  a 
mean  pleasure  in  tale-bearing  and  causing  pain, 
if  in  the  second  case  my  two  relatives  had  not 
been  grasping  and  selfish,  if  in  the  third  case  my 
friend's  widow  had  not  allowed  her  own  sense 
of  affection  to  supersede  her  judgment,  if  in 
the  fourth  case  my  friend  had  been  content  to 
let  his  merits  speak  for  themselves  instead  of 
relying  upon  personal  influences,  these  little 
crises  would  never  have  occurred;  it  seems  un- 
fair that  the  pain  and  discomfort  of  these  paltry 
situations  should  be  transferred  to  the  shoulders 
of  one  who  has  no  particular  personal  interest 
in  the  matter.  Besides,  I  cannot  honestly  trace 
in  my  own  case  the  beneficial  results  of  the 
process.    These  rubs  only  make  me  resolve  that 


46  The  Silent  Isle 

in  the  future  I  will  not  have  anything  to  do  with 
such  matters  at  all.  It  is  true  that  I  shall  not 
keep  my  resolution,  but  that  does  not  mend 
matters  appreciably. 

Moreover,  instead  of  giving  me  a  wholesome 
sense  of  hopefulness  and  confidence,  it  only 
makes  me  feel  acutely  the  dreary  and  sordid 
elements  which  seem  inextricably  intermingled 
with  life,  which  might  otherwise  be  calm,  serene, 
and  beautiful.  I  do  not  see  that  any  of  the 
people  concerned  are  the  better  for  any  of  the 
incidents  which  have  occurred — indeed,  I  think 
that  they  are  all  the  worse  for  them.  It  is  not 
encouraging  or  inspiring  to  have  the  meanness 
and  pettiness  of  human  nature  brought  before 
one,  and  to  feel  conscious  of  one's  own  weak- 
ness and  feebleness  as  well.  Some  sorrows  and 
losses  purge,  brace,  and  strengthen.  Such  trials 
as  these  stain,  perplex,  enfeeble. 

The  immediate  result  of  it  all  is  that  the  work 
which  I  can  do  and  desire  to  do,  and  which,  if 
anything,  I  seem  to  have  been  sent  into  the 
world  to  do,  is  delayed  and  hindered.  No  good 
can  come  out  of  the  things  which  I  am  going  to 
spend  the  hours  in  trying  to  mend.  Neither  will 
any  of  the  people  concerned  profit  by  my  exam- 
ple in  the  matter,  because  they  will  only  have 
their  confidence  in  my  judgment  and  amiability 
diminished. 

And  so  I  walk,  as  I  say,  along  the  sandy  lanes, 


The  Mind  of  God  47 

with  the  fresh  air  and  the  still  sunlight  all  about 
me,  kept  by  my  own  unquiet  heart  from  the 
peace  that  seems  to  be  all  about  me  within  the 
reach  of  my  hand.  The  sense  of  God's  com- 
passion for  his  feeble  creatures  does  not  help  me ; 
how  can  he  compassionate  the  littleness  for 
which  he  is  himself  responsible?  It  is  at  such 
moments  that  God  seems  remote,  careless,  in- 
different, occupied  in  his  own  designs;  strong  in 
his  ineffable  strength,  leaving  the  frail  and  sen- 
sitive creatures  whom  he  has  made,  to  whom  he 
has  given  hopes  and  dreams  too  large  for  their 
feeble  nerves  and  brains,  to  stumble  onwards  over 
vale  and  hill  without  a  comforting  smile  or  a 
sustaining  hand.  Would  that  I  could  feel  other- 
wise !  He  gives  us  the  power  of  framing  an  ideal 
of  hopefulness,  peace,  sweetness,  and  strength; 
and  then  he  mocks  at  our  attempts  to  reach 
them.  I  do  not  ask  to  see  every  step  of  the  road 
plainly;  I  only  long  to  know  that  we  are  going 
forwards,  and  not  backwards.  I  must  submit,  I 
know ;  but  I  cannot  believe  that  he  only  demands 
a  tame  and  sullen  submission;  rather  he  must 
desire  that  I  should  face  him  bravely  and  fear- 
lessly, in  hope  and  confidence,  as  a  loving  and 
beloved  son. 


V 


How  often  in  sermons  we  are  exhorted  to  effort ! 
How  rarely  are  we  told  precisely  how  to  be- 
gin !  How  glibly  it  is  taken  for  granted  that  we 
are  all  equally  capable  of  it.  Yet  energy  itself  is 
a  quality,  a  gift  of  temperament.  The  man  who, 
like  Sir  Richard  Grenville,  says,  "Fight  on," 
when  there  is  nothing  left  to  fight  with  or  to 
fight  for,  except  that  indefinable  thing  honour, 
or  the  man  who,  like  Sir  Andrew  Barton,  says : 

"  I'll  but  lie  down  and  bleed  awhile 
And  then  I'll  rise  and  fight  again;" — 

they  are  people  of  heroic  temper,  and  cannot  be 
called  a  common  species.  "Do  the  next  thing, " 
says  the  old  motto.  But  what  if  the  next  thing 
is  one  of  many,  none  of  them  very  important, 
and  if  at  the  same  time  one  has  a  good  book  to 
read,  a  warm  fire  to  sit  by,  an  amusing  friend  to 
talk  to?  "He  who  of  such  delights  can  judge, 
and  spare  to  interpose  them  oft,  is  not  unwise," 
says  Milton.  Most  of  us  have  a  certain  amount 
of  necessary  work  to  do  in  the  world,  and  it  can 
by  no  means  be  regarded  as  established  that  we 
are  also  bound  to  do  unnecessary  work.     Sup- 

48 


Effort  49 

posing  that  one's  heart  is  overflowing  with  mercy, 
compassion,  and  charity,  there  are  probably  a 
hundred  channels  in  which  the  stream  can  flow; 
but  that  is  only  because  a  good  many  hearts 
have  no  such  abounding  springs  of  love;  and 
thus  there  is  room  for  the  philanthropist;  but 
if  all  men  were  patient,  laborious,  and  affection- 
ate, the  philanthropist 's  gifts  would  find  compar- 
atively little  scope  for  their  exercise ;  there  might 
even  be  a  queue  of  benevolent  people  waiting 
for  admission  to  any  house  where  there  was  sick- 
ness or  bereavement.  Moreover,  all  sufferers  do 
not  want  to  be  cheered;  they  often  prefer  to  be 
left  alone;  and  to  be  the  compulsory  recipient  of 
the  charity  you  do  not  require  is  an  additional 
burden.  A  person  who  is  always  hungering  and 
thirsting  to  exercise  a  higher  influence  upon 
others  is  apt  to  be  an  unmitigated  bore.  The 
thing  must  be  given  if  it  is  required,  not  poured 
over  people's  heads,  as  Aristophanes  says,  with 
a  ladle.  To  be  ready  to  help  is  a  finer  quality 
than  to  insist  on  helping,  because,  after  all,  if 
life  is  a  discipline,  the  aim  is  that  we  have  to 
find  the  way  out  of  our  troubles,  not  that  we 
should  be  lugged  and  hauled  through  them, 
"bumped  into  paths  of  peace, "  as  Dickens  says. 
Just  as  justice  requires  to  be  tempered  by  mercy, 
so  energy  requires  to  be  tempered  by  inaction. 
But  the  difficulty  is  for  the  indolent,  the  dreamy, 
the  fastidious,  the  loafer,  the  vagabond.    Energy 


50  The  Silent  Isle 

is  to  a  large  extent  a  question  of  climate  and  tem- 
perament. What  of  the  dwellers  in  a  rich  and 
fertile  country,  where  a  very  little  work  will 
produce  the  means  of  livelihood,  and  where  the 
temperature  does  not  require  elaborate  houses, 
carefully  warmed,  or  abundance  of  conventional 
clothing?  A  dweller  in  Galilee  at  the  time  of  the 
Christian  era,  a  dweller  in  Athens  at  the  time  of 
Socrates — it  was  possible  for  each  of  these  to  live 
simply  and  comfortably  without  any  great  ex- 
penditure of  labour;  does  morality  require  that 
one  should  work  harder  than  one  need  for  lux- 
uries that  one  does  not  want?  Neither  our  Lord 
nor  Socrates  seem  to  have  thought  so.  Our  Lord 
himself  went  about  teaching  and  doing  good ;  but 
there  is  no  evidence  that  he  began  his  work  be- 
fore he  was  thirty,  and  he  interposed  long  spaces 
of  reflection  and  soltitude.  If  the  Gospel  of  work 
were  to  be  paramount,  he  would  have  filled  his 
days  with  feverish  energy;  but  from  the  be- 
ginning to  the  end  there  is  abundance  of  texts 
and  incidents  which  show  that  he  thought 
excessive  industry  rather  a  snare  than  otherwise. 
He  spoke  very  sternly  of  the  bad  effect  of  riches. 
He  told  his  disciples  not  to  labour  for  perishable 
things,  not  to  indulge  anxiety  about  food  and 
raiment,  but  to  live  like  birds  and  flowers;  he 
rebuked  a  bustling,  hospitable  woman — he 
praised  one  who  preferred  to  sit  and  hear  him 
talk.      His    whole   attitude   was    to    encourage 


Heredity  51 

reflection  rather  than  philanthropy,  to  invite 
people  to  think  and  converse  about  moral 
principles  rather  than  to  fling  themselves  into 
mundane  activities.  There  is  far  more  justi- 
fication in  the  Gospel  for  a  life  of  kindly  and 
simple  leisure  than  there  is  for  what  may  be 
called  a  busy  and  successful  career.  The  Christ- 
ian is  taught  rather  to  love  God  and  to  be 
interested  in  his  neighbour  than  to  love  respecta- 
bility and  to  make  a  fortune.  Indeed,  to  make 
a  fortune  on  Christian  lines  is  a  thing  which  re- 
quires a  somewhat  sophistical  defence. 

And  thus  the  old  theory  of  accepting  salvation 
rather  than  working  for  it  is  based  not  so  much 
upon  the  theory  that  in  the  presence  of  absolute 
and  infinite  perfection  there  is  little  difference 
between  the  life  of  the  entirely  virtuous  and  the 
entirely  vicious  man,  as  upon  the  fact  that  if  one's 
limitations  of  circumstance  and  heredity  are  the 
gift  of  God,  one's  salvation  must  be  his  gift  also. 
We  do  not  know  to  what  extent  our  power  of 
choice  and  our  freedom  of  action  is  limited ;  it  is 
quite  obvious  that  it  is  to  a  certain  extent  limited 
by  causes  over  which  we  have  no  control,  and 
it  is  therefore  best  to  trust  God  entirely  in  the 
matter,  and  to  acquit  him  of  injustice,  if  we  can, 
though  it  must  be  a  hard  matter  for  the  innocent 
child  who  is  the  victim  of  his  ancestors'  propen- 
sities to  believe  that  the  best  has  been  done  for 
him  that  it  was  possible  to  do. 


52  The  Silent  Isle 

And  thus  the  question  of  effort  is  not  a  simple 
one,  though  it  may  be  said  roughly  that  as  every 
one's  ideal  is  at  all  events  somewhat  higher  than 
his  practice,  it  is  a  plain  duty  to  make  one's 
practice  conform  a  little  closer  to  one's  ideal. 

Sometimes  one  is  bewildered  by  the  sight  of 
men  who  seem  to  have  all  the  material  for  a 
good  and  useful  and  happy  life  ready  to  hand, 
but  who  yet  attempt  the  wrong  things,  or  are 
pushed  :nto  attempting  them,  by  not  taking  the 
measure  of  their  powers.  Of  course,  there  is  a 
great  nobleness  about  people  who  ardently  un- 
dertake the  impossible;  but  what  can  one  make 
of  the  people,  and  they  are  very  numerous,  who 
have  not  the  ardent  quality  in  their  souls?  Is  it 
possible  to  become  ardent  even  if  one  does  not 
happen  to  admire  the  quality?  I  fear  not.  But 
what  ought  to  be  possible  for  every  one  is  to  ar- 
rive at  a  sort  of  harmony  of  life,  to  have  definite 
things  that  they  want  to  do,  definite  regions  in 
which  they  desire  to  advance.  The  people  whom 
it  is  hard  to  fit  into  any  scheme  of  benevolent 
creation  are  the  vague,  insignificant,  drifting 
people,  whose  only  rooted  tendency  is  to  do 
whatever  is  suggested  to  them.  One  who  like 
myself  has  been  a  schoolmaster  knows  that  the 
danger  of  school  life  is  not  that  the  wicked  are 
numerous,  but  the  weak;  the  boys  who  have 
little  imagination,  little  prudence,  and  who  can- 
not summon  up  an  instinctive  motive  to  protect 


Weak  Characters  53 

them  against  yielding  to  any  temptation  that 
may  fall  in  their  way.  These  are  the  people 
who  get  so  little  sympathy  and  encouragement. 
Their  stronger  companions  use  them  and  de- 
spise them,  treating  them  as  a  convenient 
audience,  as  the  Greek  heroes  in  the  Iliad 
treated  the  feeble,  sheep-like  soldiers,  who 
ran  hither  and  thither  on  the  field  of  battle, 
well-meaning,  ineffective,  " strengthless  heads." 
The  brisk  and  virtuous  master  bullies  them,  calls 
them  bolsters  and  puddings,  loafers  and  ne'er- 
do-weels.  What  wonder  if  they  do  not  easily 
discern  their  place  in  the  scheme  of  things!  In- 
deed, if  it  were  not  for  tender  fathers  and  moth- 
ers who  believe  in  them  and  encourage  them, 
their  lot  would  be  intolerable.  How  is  such  a 
boy  to  make  an  effort?  His  work  wearies  and 
puzzles  him — it  does  not  seem  to  lead  him  any- 
where; he  has  no  gift  for  games;  he  is  neither 
amusing  nor  attractive;  he  gets  no  credit  for 
anything,  and  indeed  he  deserves  none;  he 
ought  really  to  be  in  a  kind  of  moral  sanatorium, 
guarded,  guided,  encouraged  by  wise  and  faith- 
ful and  compassionate  pastors.  The  worst 
feature  of  school  life  is  that  if  it  fortifies  char- 
acters with  some  vigour  about  them,  it  implies 
that  others  must  inevitably  go  under  and  be 
turned  out  moral  and  mental  failures.  It  is  the 
way  of  the  world,  says  the  philosopher,  rough 
justice!     It  may  be  justice,  but  it  is  certainly 


54  The  Silent  Isle 

rough;  and  I  look  forward  to  the  time  when  we 
educators  of  the  present  generation  will  be  con- 
sidered incredibly  hard-hearted,  unconscientious, 
immoral,  for  acquiescing  so  contentedly  in  the 
ruthless  sacrifice  of  the  weak  to  the  culture  of  the 
strong. 

Ought  we  then,  it  may  be  asked,  to  decide  that 
if  people  are  incapable  of  sustained  effort,  no 
effort  is  to  be  expected  of  them?  Are  we  to  de- 
cline upon  a  genial  determinism,  and  to  sweep 
away  all  belief  in  moral  responsibility?  No! 
because  even  if  we  are  determinists,  we  have  to 
take  into  account  the  fact  that  society  does  for 
some  reason  advance.  When  we  consider  the 
fact  that  the  Tightness  of  humanitarian  principles, 
of  anti-slavery  movements,  of  popular  edu- 
cation, of  Factory  Acts,  of  public  hospitals  is 
universally  admitted;  when  we  compare  the 
current  principles  of  the  nineteenth-century 
man  with  the  current  principles,  say,  of  the 
fourteenth-century  man,  it  is  plain  that  there 
has  been  a  remarkable  rise  of  the  moral  tempera- 
ture, and  that  our  optimistic  view  of  progress  is 
a  rational  one. 

The  ordinary  person  is  to-day  quite  as  strongly 
convinced  of  the  rights  of  other  men  as  he  is  of 
their  duties;  and  thus  the  determinist  is  bound 
to  confess  that  there  is  an  ameliorating  and  hu- 
manising principle  at  work,  if  not  in  the  world 
at  large,  at  least  in  the  Western  races.    It  is  incon- 


Responsibility  55 

sistent  to  acquiesce  in  faulty  practice  and  not  to 
acquiesce  in  the  growth  of  ideals,  even  though 
one  may  believe  that  the  advance  is  due  to 
some  external  cause  and  is  not  self-developed. 
If  performance  is  always  more  or  less  straining 
after  the  ideal,  the  determinist  is  justified  in  ex- 
pecting a  higher  standard  of  performance,  and 
his  fatalism  may  take  the  direction  of  removing 
the  obstacles  to  further  improvement.  But  in 
dealing  with  individuals  the  moralist  does  well  to 
temper  his  hopes  with  a  wise  determinism,  and 
not  to  be  too  much  cast  down  if  one  to  whom 
he  has  made  clear  the  disastrous  effects  of  yield- 
ing to  temptation  cannot  at  once  harmonise 
his  purpose  and  his  practice.  If  it  were  true, 
as  too  many  preachers  take  for  granted,  that  we 
have  all,  whatever  our  difference  of  physical  and 
mental  equipment,  an  equal  sense  of  moral  re- 
sponsibility, the  result  would  be  to  plunge  us 
into  hopeless  pessimism.  The  question  is 
whether  the  moralist  is  justified  in  pretending, 
for  the  sake  of  the  effort  that  it  may  produce, 
to  the  victim  of  some  moral  weakness,  that  he 
really  has  the  power  of  conquering  his  fault. 
He  may  say  to  himself,  "Some  people  have  the 
power  of  self-mastery,  and  it  is  better  to  assume 
that  all  have,  because  it  tends  to  produce  a 
greater  effort  than  if  one  merely  tries  to  console 
a  moral  weakling  for  his  deficiencies."  But 
this  is  a  dangerous  and  casuistical  path  to  tread. 


56  The  Silent  Isle 

It  may  be  justified  perhaps  on  the  medical 
theory  that  if  you  tell  a  man  he  will  get  well, 
even  if  you  consider  him  to  be  doomed,  he  is 
more  likely  to  get  well  than  if  you  tell  him  that 
you  consider  him  to  be  doomed.  But  it  is 
surely  wrong  to  display  no  more  moral  indig- 
nation in  the  case  of  a  vigorous  person  who  has 
perversely  indulged  some  temptation  which  he 
might  have  resisted,  than  in  the  case  of  one  who 
is  hampered  by  inheritance  with  a  violent  pre- 
disposition to  moral  evil.  Even  the  most  ardent 
moralist  ought  to  be  true  to  what  he  knows  to 
be  the  truth.  The  method  of  Christ  seems  here 
again  to  differ  from  the  method  of  the  Christian 
teacher.  Christ  reserved  his  denunciations  for 
the  complacency  of  virtuous  people.  We  do 
not  see  him  rebuking  the  sinner;  his  rebukes  are 
rather  heaped  upon  the  righteous.  He  seems 
to  have  had  nothing  but  compassion  for  the  sins 
that  brought  their  own  obvious  punishment,  and 
to  have  been  indignant  only  with  the  sins  that 
brought  material  prosperity  with  them.  He 
treated  the  outcast  as  his  friend,  the  respectable 
as  his  enemy.  He  seems  to  have  held  that  sin  at 
least  taught  people  to  make  allowances,  to  for- 
give, to  love,  and  that  this  was  the  nearest  way 
to  the  Father's  heart.  Christ  was  very  critical, 
and  relentlessly  exposed  those  of  whom  he  dis- 
approved, but  he  was  never  critical  of  weakness. 

But,  we  may  say,  the  moral  principles  which 


The  Right  Method  57 

we  have  won  with  such  difficulty  will  collapse 
and  fail  if  we  do  not  make  a  resolute  stand 
against  gross  faults  and  strike  at  them  wherever 
they  show  their  heads.  It  is  true  that  we  have 
not  got  on  very  fast,  but  may  it  not  be  that  we 
have  mistaken  the  right  method?  Perhaps  we 
should  have  got  on  faster  still  if  we  had  reserved 
our  indignation  for  the  right  things — self-satis- 
faction, complacency,  injustice,  cruelty.  What 
we  have  done  is  to  fight  against  the  faults  of  the 
weak,  against  the  faults  of  which  no  defence  is 
possible,  rather  than  against  the  faults  of  the 
strong,  who  can  resent  and  revenge  themselves 
for  our  criticism.  Christ  himself  seems  not  to 
have  been  afraid  of  the  sins  of  the  flesh,  but  to 
have  shown  his  severity  rather  against  the  sins 
of  the  world.  Would  it  be  rash  to  follow  his 
example?  We  can  all  see  the  havoc  wrought 
by  impurity  and  intemperance,  and  there  are 
plenty  of  rich  respectable  people,  chaste  and 
moderate  by  instinct,  who  are  ready  to  join  in 
what  are  called  crusades  against  them.  But  as 
long  as  sins  do  not  menace  health  or  prosperity 
or  comfort,  we  easily  and  glibly  condone  them. 
As  long  as  Christian  teachers  pursue  wealth  and 
preferment,  indulge  ambition,  seek  the  society 
of  the  respectable,  practice  pharisaical  virtues, 
we  are  not  likely  to  draw  much  nearer  to  the 
ideals  of  Christ. 


VI 

There  is  one  step  of  supreme  importance  from 
which  a  man  must  not  shrink,  however  difficult 
it  may  reem  to  be;  and  that  is  to  search  and 
probe  the  depths  of  his  soul,  that  he  may  find  out 
what  it  is  that  he  really  and  deeply  and  whole- 
heartedly and  instinctively  loves  and  admires 
and  desires.  Without  this  first  step  no  progress 
is  possible  or  conceivable,  because  whatever  ex- 
ternal revelations  of  God  there  may  be,  through 
nature,  through  beauty,  through  work,  through 
love,  there  is  always  a  direct  and  inner  reve- 
lation from  God  to  every  individual  soul ;  and, 
strange  as  it  may  appear,  this  is  not  always 
easy  to  discern,  because  of  the  influences,  the 
ideas,  the  surroundings  that  have  been  always 
at  work  upon  us,  moulding  us,  for  good  and  for 
evil,  from  our  earliest  days.  We  have  been  told 
that  we  ought  to  admire  this  and  desire  that, 
until  very  often  our  own  inspiration,  our  true 
life,  has  been  clumsily  obscured.  All  these  con- 
ventional beliefs  we  must  discard ;  we  may  indeed 
resolve  that  it  is  better  in  some  cases  to  comply 
with  them  to  a  certain  extent  for  the  sake  of 

58 


Right  and  Wrong  59 

tranquillity,  if  they  are  widely  accepted  in  the 
society  in  which  we  live;  that  is  to  say,  we  may 
decide  to  abstain  from  certain  things  which  we 
do  not  believe  to  be  wrong,  because  the  world 
regards  them  as  being  wrong,  and  because  to  be 
misunderstood  in  such  things  may  damage  our 
relations  with  others.  Thus,  to  use  a  familiar 
instance,  we  might  think  it  unjust  that  a  land- 
owner should  be  permitted  by  the  State  to  have 
the  sole  right  of  fishing  in  a  certain  river,  and 
though  one's  conscience  would  not  in  the  least 
rebuke  one  for  fishing  in  that  river,  one  might 
abstain  from  doing  so  because  of  the  incon- 
veniences which  might  ensue.  Or,  again,  if 
society  considers  a  certain  practice  to  be  morally 
meritorious,  one  might  acquiesce  in  performing 
it  even  though  one  disbelieved  in  its  advisa- 
bility ;  thus  a  man  might  believe  that  a  marriage 
ceremony  was  a  meaningless  thing,  and  that 
mutual  love  was  a  far  higher  consecration  than 
the  consecration  of  a  priest;  and  yet  he  might 
rightly  acquiesce  in  having  his  own  wedding  cele- 
brated according  to  the  rites  of  a  particular 
church,  for  the  sake  of  compliance  with  social 
traditions,  and  because  no  principle  was  in- 
volved in  his  standing  out  against  it,  or  even  be- 
cause he  thought  it  a  seemly  and  beautiful  thing. 
The  only  compliance  which  is  immoral  is  the 
compliance  with  a  practice  which  one  believes 
to  be  immoral  and  which  yet  is  sanctioned  by 


60  The  Silent  Isle 

society.  Thus  if  a  man  believes  hunting  to  be 
immoral,  he  must  not  take  part  in  it  for  the  sake 
of  such  enjoyment  as  he  may  find  in  it,  or  for 
the  sake  of  friendly  intercourse,  simply  because 
no  penalty  awaits  him  for  doing  what  he  knows 
to  be  wrong. 

The  only  criterion  in  the  matter  is  this:  one 
must  ask  oneself  what  are  the  things  that  one  is 
ashamed  of  doing,  the  things  for  which,  when 
done,  one's  own  conscience  smites  one  in  secret, 
even  if  they  are  accompanied  by  no  social  pen- 
alty whatever,  even  if  they  are  forgiven  and  for- 
gotten. These  are  not  the  things  which  one 
would  simply  dislike  others  to  know  that  one 
has  done.  One  might  fear  the  condemnation  of 
others,  even  though  one  did  not  believe  that  a 
particular  act  was  in  itself  wrong,  because  of 
the  misunderstandings  and  vexation  and  grief 
and  derision  that  the  knowledge  of  one's  action 
might  create.  To  take  an  absurd  instance,  a 
man  might  think  it  pleasant  and  even  beneficial 
to  sit  or  walk  naked  in  the  open  air ;  but  it  would 
not  be  worth  his  while  to  do  it,  because  he  would 
be  thought  eccentric  and  indecent.  There 
would  be  people  who  would  condemn  it  as  im- 
moral; but  it  is  not  our  duty,  unless  we  believe 
it  to  be  so,  to  convert  others  to  a  simpler  kind  of 
morality  in  wholly  indifferent  matters. 

The  sort  of  offences  for  which  conscience 
condemns  one,   but  to  which  no  legal  penalty 


Quia  Posse  Videntur  61 

is  attached,  are  things  like  petty  cruelty,  un- 
necessary harshness,  unkindness,  introducing 
innocent  people  to  evil  thought  and  ideas,  disillu- 
sioning others,  disappointing  them.  A  man  may 
do  these  things  and  not  only  not  be  thought 
the  worse  of  for  them,  but  may  actually  be 
thought  the  better  of,  as  a  person  of  spirit  and 
manliness;  but  if  for  any  motive  whatever,  or 
even  out  of  the  strange  duality  of  nature  that 
besets  us,  he  yields  to  these  things,  then  he  is 
living  by  the  light  of  conventional  morality  and 
quenching  his  inner  light,  as  deliberately  as  if  he 
blew  out  for  mere  wantonness  a  lantern  in  a  dark 
and  precipitous  place. 

But  if  a  man,  looking  narrowly  and  nearly 
into  his  own  soul,  says  to  himself  in  perfect 
candour,  I  do  not  desire  truth;  I  do  not  ad- 
mire self-sacrifice;  I  do  not  wish  to  be  loved; 
I  only  wish  to  be  healthy  and  rich  and  popular : 
what  then?  What  if  he  says  to  himself  in  entire 
frankness  that  the  only  reason  why  he  admires 
what  are  called  virtues  is  because  there  seem  to 
be  enough  people  in  the  world  to  admire  them  to 
add  to  his  credit  if  such  virtues  are  attributed 
to  him — what  of  his  case?  Well,  I  would  have 
him  look  closer  yet  and  see  if  there  is  not  per- 
haps some  one  in  the  world,  a  mother,  a  sister, 
a  child,  whom  he  loves  with  an  unselfish  love, 
whom  he  would  willingly  please  if  he  could,  and 
would  forbear  to  grieve  though   he  could  gain 


62  The  Silent  Isle 

nothing  by  doing  so  or  abstaining  from  doing  so. 
I  do  not  honestly  think  that  there  is  any  living 
being  who  would  not  discover  this  minimum  of 
disinterestedness  in  his  spirit,  and  upon  this 
slender  foundation  he  must  try  to  build,  for  upon 
no  other  basis  than  genuine  and  native  truth  can 
any  life  be  built  at  all. 

But  as  a  rule,  in  most  hearts,  however  ham- 
pered by  habit  and  material  desires,  there  is  a 
deep-seated  desire  to  be  worthier  and  better. 
And  all  who  discern  such  a  desire  in  their  hearts 
should  endeavour  to  fan  it  into  flame,  should 
warm  their  shivering  hands  at  it,  should  frame 
it  as  a  constant  aspiration,  should  live  as  far  as 
possible  with  the  people  and  the  books  and  the 
art  which  touches  that  frail  desire  into  life  and 
makes  them  feel  their  possibilities.  They  may 
fail  a  thousand  times;  but  for  all  that,  this  is  the 
seed  of  hope  and  love,  the  tree  of  life  that  grows 
in  the  midst  of  the  garden.  God  will  not  let  any 
of  us  stay  where  we  are,  and  yet  the  growth  and 
progress  must  be  our  own.  We  may  delay  it  and 
hamper  it,  but  we  yet  may  dare  to  hope  that 
through  experiences  we  cannot  imagine,  through 
existences  we  cannot  foresee,  that  little  seed  may 
grow  into  a  branching  tree,  and  fill  the  garden 
with  shade  and  fragrance. 

But  if  we  are  indeed  desirous  to  do  better,  to 
grow  in  grace,  and  yet  feel  ourselves  terribly 
weak  and  light-minded,  what  practical  steps  can 


Quia  Posse  Videntur  63 

we  take  to  the  goal  that  we  see  far  off?  The 
one  thing  that  we  can  do  in  moments  of  insight 
is  to  undertake  some  little  responsibility  which 
we  shall  be  ashamed  to  discard.  We  can  look 
round  our  circle,  and  it  will  be  strange  if  we 
cannot  find  at  least  one  person  whom  we  can 
help;  and  the  best  part  of  assuming  such  a 
responsibility  is  that  it  tends  to  grow  and  ramify; 
but  in  any  case  there  is  surely  one  person  whom 
we  can  relieve,  or  encourage,  or  listen  to,  or  make 
happier;  if  we  can  find  the  strength  to  come 
forward,  to  lead  such  a  one  to  depend  upon  us, 
we  shall  have  little  inclination  to  desert  or  play 
false  one  whom  we  have  encouraged  to  trust  us. 
And  thus  we  can  take  our  first  trembling  step 
out  of  the  mire. 


VII 

It  is  an  error  either  to  glorify  or  degrade  the 
body.  If  we  worship  it  or  pamper  it,  when  it 
fails  us,  we  are  engulfed  and  buried  in  its  ruins; 
if  we  misuse  it,  and  we  can  misuse  it  alike  by 
obeying  it  and  disregarding  it,  it  becomes  our 
master  and  tyrant,  or  it  fails  us  as  an  instru- 
ment. We  must  regard  it  rather  as  our  prison, 
serving  us  for  shelter  and  security,  to  be  kept 
as  fair  and  wholesome  and  cleanly  as  may  be. 
When  we  are  children,  we  are  hardly  conscious 
of  it — or  rather  we  are  hardly  conscious  of  any- 
thing else ;  in  youth  and  maturity  we  are  perhaps 
conscious  of  its  joy  and  strength;  but  even  so 
we  must  also  at  times  be  sadly  aware  that  it  is 
indeed  the  body  of  our  humiliation ;  we  must  be 
aware  of  its  dishonour,  its  uncleanly  processes, 
its  ugliness  and  feebleness,  its  slothfulness  and 
perversity.  There  are  times  when  the  soul  sighs 
to  think  of  itself  as  chained  to  a  sort  of  brute; 
it  tugs  at  its  chain,  it  snaps  and  growls,  it  tears 
and  rends  us;  at  another  time  it  is  content  and 
serviceable;  at  another  it  grows  spent  and  faint, 
and  keeps  the  soul  loitering,  heart-sick  and  re- 
luctant, on  its  pilgrimage. 

64 


Soul  and  Body  65 

But  when  once  we  have  perceived  the  truth, 
that  the  body  is  not  ourselves,  but  the  habitation 
of  the  soul,  we  can  make  it  into  an  instrument 
of  our  development.  We  can  curb  it  when  it  is 
headstrong,  we  can  goad  it  when  it  is  indolent, 
and  when  it  fails  and  thwarts  us,  as  sooner  or 
later  it  must  do  to  all  of  us,  the  soul  can  sit  be- 
side it,  neither  heeding  it  nor  compassionating  it, 
but  just  triumphing  over  it  in  hope  and  patience. 

There  are  seasons  in  the  lives  of  most  of  us 
when  the  soul  is  full  of  zeal  and  insight,  when  it 
would  like  to  work  joyfully,  to  cheer  and  console 
and  help  others,  to  utter  its  song  of  praise,  to 
make  a  happy  stir  in  the  world,  when  the  body 
is  morose  and  feeble  and  ill  at  ease,  checks  our 
work  and  utterance,  makes  us  timid  when  we 
should  be  bold,  and  mournful  when  we  wish  to 
be  amiable  and  genial;  but  these  are  the  very 
hours  when  the  soul  grows  most  speedily  and 
surely,  if  we  do  not  allow  the  body  to  check  and 
restrain  us;  we  must  perhaps  husband  its  re- 
sources, but  we  can  stifle  our  complaints,  we  can 
be  brave  and  cheerful  and  kind. 

And  even  if  the  disasters  of  the  body  have  been 
in  a  sense  our  own  fault ;  if  we  have  lived  prodi- 
gally and  carelessly,  either  yielding  to  base 
desires  or  recklessly  overworking  and  over- 
straining the  mortal  frame,  for  however  high  a 
motive,  we  can  still  triumph  if  we  never  yield 
for  a  moment  to  regret  or  remorse,  but  accept  the 
s 


66  The  Silent  Isle 

conditions  humbly  and  quietly,  using  such 
strength  as  we  have  to  the  uttermost.  For  here 
lies  one  of  our  strongest  delusions,  our  belief  in 
our  own  effectiveness.  God 's  concern  with  each 
of  us  is  direct  and  individual ;  the  influences  and 
personalities  he  brings  us  into  contact  with  are 
all  of  his  designing;  and  we  may  be  sure  of  this, 
that  God  will  make  us  just  as  effective  as  he  in- 
tends, and  that  we  are  often  more  effective  in 
silence  and  dejection  than  we  are  in  activity  and 
courage.  We  mourn  faithlessly  over  lives  cut 
short,  activity  suspended,  promise  unfulfilled; 
but  we  may  be  sure  that  in  every  case  God  is 
dealing  faithfully  with  each  soul,  and  using  it 
as  an  instrument  as  far  as  it  is  fitted  to  be  used; 
and  thus  for  an  active  man  disabled  by  illness  to 
mourn  over  his  wasted  power  is  a  grievous  mis- 
take, and  no  less  a  mistake  to  mourn  over  the 
unprofitableness  of  our  lives,  for  they  have  been 
as  profitable  as  God  willed  them  to  be.  We 
can  only  be  profitable  to  those  for  contact  with 
whom  God  has  prepared  both  them  and  us ;  and 
thus  our  duty  in  the  matter  is  not  to  indulge  in 
any  anticipations  of  what  our  body  may  be  able 
to  do  or  unable  to  do,  but  simply  to  undertake 
what  seems  our  plain  duty;  and  then  we  shall 
find  that  the  body  can  often  do  more  than  we 
could  have  imagined,  and  especially  if  it  be  di- 
rected by  a  tranquil  mind;  and  if  it  fails  us,  that 
very  failure  is  but  the  pressure  of  God's  hand 


The  Track  of  the  Soul  67 

upon  our  shoulder,  saying,  "Continue  in  weak- 
ness and  be  not  dismayed."  If  it  is  an  error  to 
increase  our  own  limitations,  it  is  equally  an  error 
not  to  give  heed  to  them  and  to  profit  by  them; 
and,  after  all,  the  body  is  more  apt  to  rebel  in 
carrying  out  the  duties  we  dislike  than  in  en- 
joying the  pleasures  on  which  we  have  set  our 
mind.  The  real  reason  of  our  faithlessness  is 
that  we  are  so  apt  to  look  upon  the  one  life  in 
which  we  find  ourselves  as  our  only  chance  of 
expression  and  effectuation.  If  it  were  so,  it 
would  matter  little  what  we  did  or  said,  if  the 
soul  is  to  be  extinguished  as  a  blown-out  flame 
when  the  body  is  mingled  with  the  dust. 

I  stood  once  upon  the  deck  of  a  ship  watching 
a  shoal  of  porpoises  following  us  and  racing 
round  us :  every  now  and  then  the  brown,  sleek, 
shining  bodies  of  the  great  creatures  rose  from 
the  blue  waves  and  entered  them  again  with  a 
soft  plunge.  Our  life  is  like  that :  we  rise  for  an 
instant  into  the  light  of  life,  we  fall  again  be- 
neath the  waves;  but  all  the  while  the  soul 
pursues  her  real  track  unseen  and  unsuspected, 
as  the  gliding  sea-beast  cuts  the  green  ocean 
twilight,  or  wanders  among  rocks  and  hidden 
slopes  fringed  with  the  branching  ribbons,  the 
delicate  tangles  of  brine-fed  groves. 


VIII 

Religion,  as  it  is  often  taught  and  practised, 
has  a  dangerous  tendency  to  become  a  merely 
mechanical  and  conventional  thing.  Worse  still, 
it  may  even  become  a  delusion,  either  when  it 
is  made  an  end  in  itself,  or  when  it  is  regarded 
as  a  solution  of  all  mysteries.  The  religious 
life  is  a  vocation  for  some,  just  as  the  artistic 
life  is  a  vocation  for  others,  but  it  is  not  to  be 
hoped  or  even  desired  that  all  should  embrace 
and  follow  the  religious  vocation ;  it  is  just  one  of 
the  paths  to  God,  neither  more  nor  less ;  and  the 
mistake  that  the  technically  religious  make  is  to 
regard  it  as  a  kind  of  life  that  is  or  ought  to  be 
universal.  One  who  has  the  vocation  is  right 
to  follow  it,  but  he  is  not  right  to  force  it  upon 
others,  any  more  than  an  artist  would  be  right 
in  forcing  the  artistic  life  on  others.  It  is  too 
commonly  held  by  the  religious  that  formal 
worship  is  a  necessity  for  all;  they  compare  the 
relation  of  worship  to  the  spiritual  life  to  the  re- 
lation of  eating  and  drinking  to  the  physical  life. 
But  this  is  not  true  of  all  human  beings.  Public 
liturgical  worship  is  a  kind  of  art,  a  very  delicate 

68 


Ceremonial  Worship  69 

and  beautiful  art ;  and  just  as  the  appeal  of  what 
is  spiritual  comes  to  some  through  worship,  it 
comes  to  others  through  art,  or  poetry,  or  affec- 
tion, or  even  through  some  kinds  of  action.  There 
is  no  hint  that  Christ  laid  any  stress  on  liturgical 
or  public  worship  at  all;  he  attended  the  syna- 
gogue, and  went  up  to  Jerusalem  to  the  sacri- 
fices; but  he  nowhere  laid  it  down  as  a  duty,  or 
reproached  those  who  did  not  practise  it.  He 
spoke  vehemently  of  the  practice  of  prayer,  but 
recommended  that  it  should  be  made  as  secret 
as  possible;  he  chose  a  social  meal  for  his  chief 
rite,  and  the  act  of  washing  as  his  secondary  rite. 
He  did  indeed  warn  his  followers  very  sternly 
against  the  dangers  of  formalism;  he  never 
warned  them  against  the  danger  of  neglecting 
rites  and  ceremonies.  On  the  other  hand,  it 
may  be  confidently  stated  that  when  religious 
worship  has  become  a  customary  social  act,  a 
man  who  sympathises  with  the  religious  idea  is 
right  to  show  public  sympathy  with  it ;  he  ought 
to  weigh  very  carefully  his  motives  for  abstain- 
ing. If  it  is  indolence,  or  a  fear  of  being  thought 
precise,  or  a  desire  to  be  thought  independent, 
or  a  contempt  for  sentiment  that  keeps  him  back, 
he  is  probably  in  the  wrong;  nothing  but  a  gen- 
uine and  deep-seated  horror  of  formalism  justifies 
him  in  protesting  against  a  practice  which  is  to 
many  an  avenue  of  the  spiritual  life.  A  lack  of 
sympathy  with  certain  liturgical  expressions,  a 


70  The  Silent  Isle 

fear  of  being  hypocritical,  of  being  believed  to 
hold  the  orthodox  position  in  its  entirety,  justi- 
fies a  man  in  not  entering  the  ministry  of  the 
Church,  even  if  he  desires  on  general  grounds  to 
do  so,  but  these  are  paltry  motives  for  cutting 
oneself  off  from  communion  with  believers.  It 
is  clear  that  Christ  himself  thought  many  of 
the  orthodox  practices  of  the  exponents  of  the 
popular  religion  wrong,  but  he  did  not  for  that 
reason  abiure  attendance  upon  accustomed  rites ; 
and  it  is  far  more  important  to  snow  sympathy 
with  an  idea,  even  if  one  does  not  agree  with  all 
the  details,  than  to  seem,  by  protesting  against 
erroneous  detail,  to  be  out  of  sympathy  with  the 
idea.  The  mistake  is  when  a  man  drifts  into 
thinking  of  ceremonial  worship  as  a  practice 
specially  and  uniquely  dear  to  God;  every  prac- 
tice by  which  the  spiritual  principle  is  asserted 
above  the  material  principle  is  dear  to  God,  and 
a  man  who  reads  a  beautiful  poem  and  is  thrilled 
with  a  desire  for  purity,  goodness,  and  love  there- 
by, is  a  truer  worshipper  of  the  Spirit  than  a  man 
who  mutters  responses  in  a  prescribed  posture 
without  deriving  any  inspiration  from  them. 

The  essence  of  religion  is  to  desire  to  draw 
near  to  God,  to  receive  the  Spirit  of  God.  It 
does  not  in  the  least  degree  matter  how  the  in- 
dividual expresses  that  essential  truth.  He  may 
love  some  consecrated  rite  as  being  pure  and 
beautiful,   or  even  because  other  hearts   have 


Dogmatism  71 

loved  it, — the  rite  is  permitted,  not  commanded 
by  God — he  may  express  God  by  terms  of  co- 
equality  and  consubstantiality,  and  even  desire 
to  proclaim  such  expressions,  in  concert  with 
like-minded  persons,  to  the  harmonies  of  an  or- 
gan, so  long  as  it  uplifts  him  in  spirit;  but  such 
a  man  falls  into  a  grievous  error  when  he  vilifies 
or  condemns  others  for  not  seeing  as  he  does,  or 
enunciates  that  thus  and  thus  only  can  a  man 
apprehend  God.  The  more  firmly  that  a  Church 
holds  the  necessity  of  what  is  unessential,  the 
more  it  diverges  from  the  Spirit  of  Christ. 

It  is  by  the  essentials  that  we  live  and  make 
progress.  The  man  who  apprehends  such  a 
statement  of  doctrine  as  the  Athanasian  creed 
affords,  as  a  sweet  and  gracious  mystery,  there- 
by draws  nearer  to  God.  But  if  he  goes  further 
and  says,  "The  essence  of  my  finding  inspiration 
in  any  particular  creed  is  that  I  should  believe 
it  to  be  absolutely  and  literally  true,  and  that 
all  outside  it  are  thieves  and  robbers,  or  at  the 
best  ignorant  and  misguided  persons,"  then  he 
stumbles  at  the  very  outset.  His  own  belief  is 
probably  true  in  the  sense  that  the  truth  doubt- 
less transcends  and  embraces  all  spiritual  light 
hopefully  discerned ;  but  the  moment  that  a  man 
condemns  those  who  do  not  exactly  agree  with 
himself,  he  sins  against  the  Spirit.  Is  it  not  a 
ghastly  and  inconceivable  thought  that  Christ 
should   have   authorised   that   men   should   be 


72  The  Silent  Isle 

brought  to  the  light  by  persecution?  Or  that 
any  of  his  words  could  be  so  foully  distorted  as 
to  lend  the  least  excuse  to  such  a  principle  of 
action?  It  matters  not  what  kind  of  persecution 
is  employed,  whether  it  be  mental  or  physical. 
The  essence  is  that  men  should  so  apprehend 
God  as  to  desire  to  draw  nearer  to  him,  and  that 
they  should  be  goaded  or  coerced  or  terrified 
into  submission  is  intolerable. 

The  true  worshipper  is  the  man  who  at  no 
specified  place  or  time,  but  as  naturally  as  he 
breathes  or  sleeps,  opens  his  heart  to  God  and 
prays  for  holy  influences  to  guard  and  guide 
him.  There  are  some  who  have  a  quickened 
sense  of  fellowship  and  unity,  when  such 
prayers  and  aspirations  are  uttered  in  concert; 
but  the  error  is  to  desire  merely  the  bodily 
presence  of  one's  fellow-creatures  for  such  a 
purpose,  rather  than  their  mental  and  spiritual 
acquiescence.  The  result  of  such  a  desire  is 
that  it  is  often  taught,  or  at  all  events  believed, 
that  there  is  a  kind  of  merit  in  the  attendance  at 
public  worship.  The  only  merit  of  it  lies  in  the 
case  of  those  who  sacrifice  a  personal  disin- 
clination to  the  desire  to  testify  sympathy  for 
the  religious  life.  It  is  no  more  meritorious  for 
those  who  personally  enjoy  it,  than  it  is  for  a 
lover  of  pictures  to  go  to  a  picture-gallery,  for 
thus  the  hunger  of  the  spirit  is  satisfied. 

It  would  be  better,  perhaps,  if  it  were  frankly 


Spirituality  73 

realised  and  recognised  that  it  is  a  special  taste, 
a  peculiar  vocation.  It  would  be  better  if  those 
who  loved  liturgical  worship  desired  only  the 
companionship  of  like-minded  people;  better 
still  if  it  were  recognised  that  there  is  no  neces- 
sary connection  between  liturgical  worship  and 
morality  at  all,  except  in  so  far  that  all  pure 
spiritual  instincts  are  on  the  side  of  morality. 
But  so  far  from  holding  it  to  be  a  duty  for  a  man 
to  protest  against  the  importance  attached  to 
worship  by  liturgically-minded  people,  I  should 
hold  it  to  be  a  duty  for  all  spiritually-minded 
men  to  show  as  much  active  sympathy  as  they 
can  for  a  practice  which  is  to  many  persons 
a  unique  and  special  channel  of  spiritual  grace. 
It  is  not  the  business  of  those  who  are  en- 
lightened to  protest  against  conventional  things, 
unless  those  conventions  obscure  and  distort  the 
truth.  It  is  rather  their  duty  to  fall  in  with  the 
existing  framework  of  life,  and  live  as  simply 
and  faithfully  inside  it  as  they  can.  To  myself 
the  plainest  service  is  beautiful  and  uplifting, 
if  it  obviously  evokes  the  spiritual  ardour  of  the 
worshippers;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  a  service 
in  some  majestic  church,  consecrated  by  age 
and  tradition  and  association,  and  enriched  by 
sacred  art  and  heart-thrilling  music,  appeals  as 
purely  and  graciously  as  anything  in  the  world 
to  my  spiritual  instinct.  But  I  would  frankly 
realise  that  to  some  such   ceremonies  appear 


74  The  Silent  Isle 

merely  as  unmeaning  and  uninspirin  ;  and  the 
presence  of  such  people  is  a  mere  discord  in  the 
harmony  of  sweetness. 

The  one  essential  thing  is  that  we  should  desire 
to  draw  near  to  God,  that  we  should  faithfully 
determine  by  what  way  and  in  what  manner  we 
can  approach  him  best,  and  that  we  should 
pursue  that  path  as  faithfully  and  as  quietly 
as  we  can. 


IX 

It  is  Good  Friday  to-day.  This  morning  I 
wandered  through  a  clean,  rain-washed  world, 
among  budding  hedges,  making  for  the  great 
Cathedral  towers  that  loom  across  the  flat.  It 
was  noon  when  I  passed  through  the  little 
streets.  Entering  the  great  western  portals, 
I  found  the  huge  Cathedral  all  lit  by  shafts  of 
golden  sunshine.  There  was  a  little  company 
of  worshippers  under  the  central  lantern;  and  a 
grave  and  dignified  priest,  with  a  tender  sym- 
pathy of  mien,  solemnly  vested,  was  leading  the 
little  throng  through  the  scenes  of  the  Passion. 
I  sate  for  a  long  time  among  the  congregation; 
and  what  can  I  say  of  the  message  there  de- 
livered? It  was  subtle  and  serious  enough, 
full  of  refinement  and  sweetness,  but  it  seemed 
to  me  to  have  little  or  nothing  to  do  with  life. 
I  will  not  here  go  into  the  whole  of  the  teaching 
that  I  heard — but  it  was  for  me  all  vitiated  by 
one  thought.  The  preacher  seemed  to  desire 
us  to  feel  that  the  sad  and  wasted  form  of  the 
Redeemer,  hanging  in  his  last  agony  on  the  cross 
among  the  mocking  crowd,  was  conscious  at 
once  of  his  humanity  and  his  Divinity.     But 

75 


76  The  Silent  Isle 

the  thought  is  meaningless  and  inconceivable 
to  me.  If  he  was  conscious  then  of  his  august 
origin  and  destiny,  if  he  knew  that,  to  use  a 
material  metaphor  enough,  he  would  shortly- 
pass  through  lines  of  kneeling  angels  amid 
triumphant  pealing  music  to  the  very  Throne 
and  Heart  of  God,  the  sufferings  of  his 
Passion  can  have  been  as  nothing.  There  is  no 
touch  of  example  or  help  for  me  in  the  scene. 
Even  the  despairing  cry,  "My  God,  my  God, 
why  hast  thou  forsaken  me?"  becomes  a  piece 
of  unworthy  drama;  and  yet  if  one  presses  the 
words  of  Jesus,  and  remembers  that  he  had  said 
but  a  few  short  hours  before  that  he  had  but  to 
speak  the  word,  and  legions  of  angels  were  at 
hand  to  succour  him,  it  is  impossible  to  resist 
the  feeling  that  he  knew  who  he  was  and  whither 
he  was  bound.  I  do  not  say  that  the  thesis  is 
untrue;  I  only  say  that  if  he  knew  the  truth, 
then  there  is  no  medicine  in  his  sufferings  for 
human  despair. 

The  preacher  seemed  to  feel  the  difficulty 
dimly,  for  he  fell  back  upon  the  thought  that 
the  agony  was  caused  by  Christ's  bearing  the 
load  of  the  world's  sin.  But  here  again  I  felt 
that,  after  all,  sin  must  have  been  in  a  sense 
permitted  by  God.  If  God  is  omnipotent  and 
all-embracing,  no  amount  of  free-will  in  man 
could  enable  him  to  choose  what  was  not  there 
already  in  the  Mind  of  God. 


The  Passion  77 

And  then,  too,  the  lesson  of  science  is  that  man 
is  slowly  struggling  upwards  out  of  his  bestial 
inheritance  into  purity  and  light;  and  thus  if  a 
man  can  inherit  evil  from  evil  progenitors  by 
the  law  of  God,  he  is  not  a  free  agent  in  the  mat- 
ter; and  it  thus  becomes  a  piece  of  sad  impiety, 
or  worse,  to  say  that  it  was  inconceivable 
agony  to  God  to  bear  the  sins  which  his  own 
awful  law  perpetuated. 

And  to  go  deeper,  what  did  the  sacrifice 
effect?  It  effected  no  instant  change  in  the 
disposition  of  man;  it  appears  to  me  to  be  a 
dark  profanity  to  believe  that  the  human  death 
of  Christ  effected  any  change  in  the  purpose 
and  Love  of  God  to  the  world.  That  God 
should  come  himself  on  earth  to  die,  in  order 
that  he  might  thereafter  regard  the  human  race 
more  mercifully,  seems  to  me,  if  it  were  true, 
to  be  a  helpless  piece  of  metaphysical  jugglery. 
If  that  were  true  of  God,  there  is  nothing  that  I 
could  not  believe  of  him. 

And  so  the  words  of  the  preacher,  a  man,  as  I 
knew,  of  faithful  energy  and  unbroken  prosperity 
of  virtue,  brought  me  no  more  hint  of  the  truth 
than  did  the  voice  of  a  hidden  dove  which  cooed 
contentedly  in  the  stillness  in  some  sun-warmed 
window  of  the  clerestory.  Dove  and  preacher 
alike  had  lived  secure  and  contented  lives 
under  the  shadow  of  the  great  Church,  and 
equally,  no  doubt,  if  unconsciously,  approved  of 


78  The  Silent  Isle 

the  system  which  made  such  tranquil  lives 
possible. 

Once,  it  seemed  to  me,  the  human  accent 
broke  urgently  through,  when  the  preacher 
spoke  of  dark  hours  of  spiritual  dryness,  when 
the  soul  seemed  shut  out  from  God — "When  we 
know,"  he  said  in  heart-felt  tones,  "that  the 
Love  of  God  is  all  about  us,  but  we  cannot 
enter  into  it;  it  seems  to  be  outside  of  us."  Had 
he  indeed  suffered  thus,  this  courteous,  kindly 
priest?  I  felt  that  he  had,  and  that  he  was  one 
of  the  sorrowful  fellowship. 

One  word  he  said  that  dwells  with  me,  that 
"Faith  overleaps  all  visible  horizons."  That 
was  a  golden  thought;  so  that  as  I  walked  back 
in  the  cool  of  the  afternoon,  and  saw  the  pro- 
digious plain  stretch  on  all  hands,  and  thought 
how  strangely  my  own  tiny  life  was  limited  and 
bound,  I  felt  that  the  message  of  Christ  was  a 
mysterious  trust,  an  undefined  hope;  not  a 
mechanical  process  of  forgiveness  and  atone- 
ment, but  an  assurance  that  there  is  some- 
thing in  the  world  which  calls  lovingly  to  the 
soul,  and  that  while  we  stretch  out  yearning 
hands  and  desirous  hearts  to  that,  we  are  indeed 
very  near  to  the  unknown  Mind  of  God. 


X 

I  have  often  wondered  how  it  has  come  about 
that  Job  has  become  proverbial  for  patience.  I 
suppose  that  it  has  arisen  out  of  the  verse  in 
the  Epistle  of  St.  James  about  the  patience  of 
Job;  but,  like  the  passage  in  the  Book  of  Num- 
bers which  attributes  an  extreme  meekness  to 
Moses,  it  seems  to  me  to  be  either  a  very  in- 
felicitous description,  or  else  a  case  where  both 
adjectives  have  shifted  their  meaning.  Moses 
is  notable  for  an  almost  fiery  vehemence  of 
character,  and  the  punishment  that  was  laid 
upon  him  was  the  outcome  of  a  display  of  intem- 
perate wrath.  Just  as  we  associate  meekness 
with  the  worm  that  never  turns,  so  the  typically 
patient  animal  is  the  ass  who  is  too  phlegmatic 
to  resent  the  most  unjust  chastisement,  and 
ready  to  accommodate  itself  to  the  most  over- 
taxing burdens.  But  Job  is  the  very  opposite 
of  this;  he  endures,  because  there  is  no  way  out; 
but  he  never  for  a  moment  acquiesces  in  the 
justice  of  his  affliction,  and  his  complaints  are 
both  specific  and  protracted.  He  does  not 
even    display   any   very   conspicuous    fortitude 

79 


80  The  Silent  Isle 

under  his  afflictions.  He  is  not  indomitable 
so  much  as  persistent.  He  is  rather  stubbornly 
self-righteous.  It  could  not,  of  course,  be  other- 
wise, for  the  essence  of  the  situation  is  that 
the  sufferer  should  be  aware  that  his  deeds  do 
not  deserve  punishment,  and  that  the  suffer- 
ings he  endures  should  be  permitted  in  order 
that  his  faith  in  God  as  well  as  his  faith  in  his 
own  integrity  should  be  tested. 

The  truth  is  that  the  word  patience  is  used  in 
English  in  a  double  sense ;  it  is  applied  to  a  sort 
of  unreasoning  stupidity,  which  accepts  suffer- 
ing and  pain  without  adding  to  it  by  imaginative 
comparison;  such  patience  knows  nothing  of  the 
pain  of  which  Dante  speaks,  the  pain  of  contrast- 
ing present  unhappiness  with  past  delight;  and 
similarly,  it  does  not  suffer  the  pangs  of  antici- 
pation, the  terrors  of  which  Lord  Beaconsfield 
spoke,  when  he  said  that  the  worst  calamities  in 
his  life  were  the  calamities  which  never  hap- 
pened. Nine  tenths  of  the  misery  of  suffering 
lies  in  the  power  of  forecasting  its  continuance 
and  its  increase,  and  the  lesser  patience  of  which 
I  have  spoken  is  the  patience  which,  by  no 
effort  of  reason,  but  by  pure  instinct,  bears  the 
burden  of  the  moment  in  the  spirit  of  the 
proverb  that  "  sufficient  unto  the  day  is  the  evil 
thereof." 

But  there  is  a  nobler  and  a  purer  quality  of 
patience  which  is  perhaps  one  of  the  highest  and 


Patience  81 

most  hopeful  attributes  of  humanity,  because  it 
is  nurtured  in  so  strong  a  soil,  and  watered  with 
the  dew  of  tears;  this  is  a  certain  tranquil, 
courageous,  and  unembittered  sweetness  in  the 
presence  of  an  irreparable  calamity,  which  is 
in  its  very  essence  divine,  and  preaches  more 
forcibly  the  far-reaching  permanence  of  the 
spiritual  element  in  mankind  than  a  thousand 
rhapsodies  and  panegyrics  extolling  human 
ingenuity  and  human  greatness.  Mankind  has 
a  deeply  rooted  and  childlike  instinct  that 
apology  and  repentance  ought  to  be  met  with 
the  suspension  of  pains  and  penalties,  and  the 
hardest  lesson  in  the  world  to  learn  is  that  guilt 
may  be  forgiven,  but  that  the  consequences  of 
guilt  may  yet  have  to  be  endured.  When 
we  have  really  learnt  that,  we  are  indeed 
perfected.  St.  Peter  in  one  of  his  epistles  says 
that  it  is  less  creditable  to  be  patient  when 
one  is  buffeted  for  one's  faults  than  when  one 
suffers  for  one's  virtues.  I  fear  that  I  cannot 
agree  with  this.  One  may  be  convinced  of  the 
justice  of  a  sentence,  but  the  more  one  is  con- 
vinced of  it,  the  more  does  one  regret  the  course 
of  conduct  that  made  the  sentence  necessary. 
The  sinner  who  suffers  for  his  sin  bears  not  only 
the  pain  of  the  punishment  but  also  the  sense  of 
shame  and  self-condemnation.  The  good  man 
who  suffers  for  his  goodness  does  indeed  have 
to  bear  the  burden  of  an  awful  mystery,  a  doubt 


82  The  Silent  Isle 

whether  God  is  indeed  on  the  side  of  the  right- 
eous; but  he  is  not  crushed  beneath  the  addi- 
tional burden  of  self-contempt,  he  has  not  the 
humiliating  sense  of  folly  and  weakness  which 
the  transgressor  has  to  bear;  and  thus  it  so 
often  happens  that  the  well-meaning  trans- 
gressor is  slow  to  learn  the  lesson  of  patience, 
because  he  takes  refuge  in  a  vague  sort  of 
metaphysics,  and  attributes  to  heredity  and 
environment  what  is  really  the  outcome  of  his 
own  wilfulness  and  perversity. 

But  the  true  patience,  whatever  the  cause  of 
its  sufferings,  brings  with  it  a  blessed  sense  of  the 
faithful  sternness,  the  fruitful  lovingness  of  God, 
who  will  not  let  even  the  feeblest  of  sinners  be 
satisfied  with  less  than  he  can  attain,  in  whose 
hands  the  punishment,  like  fire,  runs  swiftly 
and  agonisingly  to  and  fro,  consuming  the  baser 
elements  of  passion  and  desire. 


XI 

I  am  quite  sure  that  I  like  solitude.  There  is 
no  pleasure  in  the  world  like  waking  up  in  the 
morning  and  feeling  that  absolutely  the  whole 
day  is  at  one's  disposal;  that  one  can  work 
when  one  likes,  go  out  when  it  is  fine,  have  one's 
meals  when  one  prefers,  even  when  one  is  hun- 
gry. There  is  no  one  near  enough  to  drop  in, 
in  this  blissful  corner  of  the  world,  and  a  caller 
is  a  rare  bird.  I  have  too  much  to  do  ever  to 
be  bored,  and  indeed  the  day  is  seldom  long 
enough  for  all  I  have  designed.  Best  of  all,  my 
work,  though  abundant,  is  seldom  pressing.  I 
have  hardly  ever  anything  to  do  that  must 
be  done  that  moment.  With  some  people  that 
would  end  in  putting  off  everything  till  the  last 
moment,  but  that  is  not  the  case  with  me.  The 
greatest  luxury  I  know  is  to  have  accumulated 
stores  of  work  on  which  one  can  draw;  and  my 
tendency  is,  if  ever  a  piece  of  work  is  entrusted 
to  me,  to  do  it  at  once.  I  have  few  gregarious 
instincts,  I  suppose.  I  like  eating  alone,  read- 
ing alone,  and  walking  alone.  There  is  also  a 
good  deal  to  be  said  for  learning  to  enjoy  soli- 

83 


84  The  Silent  Isle 

tude,  for  it  is  the  one  luxury  that  a  man  without 
any  close  home  ties  can  command.  An  inde- 
pendent bachelor  is  sure,  whether  he  likes  it 
or  not,  to  have,  as  life  goes  on,  mo  e  and  more 
enforced  solitude — that  is,  if  he  detests  living  in 
a  town.  I  have  not  even  nephews  and  nieces 
whom  it  would  be  natural  to  see  something  of; 
and  thus  it  is  a  wise  economy  to  practise  for 
solitude. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  work,  too,  it  is 
undeniably  delightful.  I  need  never  suspend  a 
train  of  thought;  I  can  write  till  I  have  finished 
a  subject.  There  is  never  the  abominable 
necessity  of  stopping  in  the  middle  of  a  sentence, 
with  the  prospect  of  having  laboriously  to 
recapture  the  mood;  and  it  is  the  same  with 
reading.  If  I  am  interested  in  a  book,  I  can 
read  on  till  I  am  satiated.  Never  before  in 
my  life  have  I  had  the  chance  of  reading,  as 
Theocrite  praised  God,  "morning,  evening, 
noon,  and  night."  But  now,  if  I  get  really 
absorbed  in  a  volume,  I  can  let  the  whole  story, 
tragedy  or  comedy,  open  before  me,  take  its 
course,  and  draw  to  a  close.  The  result  is  that 
I  find  I  can  apprehend  a  book  in  a  way  that 
I  have  never  apprehended  one  before,  in  its 
entirety;  one  can  enter  wholly  and  completely 
into  the  mind  of  an  author,  into  the  progress  of  a 
biography;  so  that  to  read  a  book  now  is  like 
sitting  out  a  play. 


Solitude  85 

All  this  is  very  delightful ;  and  no  less  delight- 
ful, too,  is  it,  if  the  mood  takes  me,  to  wander  off 
for  a  whole  day  in  the  country ;  to  moon  onwards 
entirely  oblivious  of  time;  to  stop  on  a  hill-top 
and  survey  a  scene,  to  turn  into  a  village  church 
and  sit  long  in  the  cool  gloom ;  to  seek  out  the 
heart  of  a  copse,  all  carpeted  with  spring  flowers, 
and  to  lie  on  a  green  bank,  with  the  whisper  of 
the  leaves  in  one's  ear;  or  to  sit  beside  a  stream, 
near  a  crystal  pool,  half-hidden  in  sedges,  and  to 
see  hour  by  hour  what  goes  on  in  the  dim  water- 
world.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  it  would  not 
be  pleasanter  to  share  one 's  rambles  with  a  con- 
genial companion;  but  it  is  not  easy  to  find  one; 
either  there  are  differences  of  opinion,  or  the 
subtle  barriers  of  age  to  overleap,  or  one  is  con- 
scious that  there  are  regions  of  one's  mind  in 
which  a  friend  will  inevitably  and  fretfully  miss 
his  way — there  are  not  many  friends,  for  any 
one,  to  whom  his  mind  can  lie  perfectly  and 
unaffectedly  open;  and  thus,  though  I  do  not 
hesitate  to  say  that  I  would  prefer  the  society  of 
the  perfect  friend  to  my  loneliness,  yet  I  prefer 
my  loneliness  to  the  incursions  of  the  imperfect 
friend. 

Then  at  the  close  of  day  there  is  a  prospect  of  a 
long,  quiet  evening;  one  can  go  to  bed  when  one 
wishes,  with  the  thought  of  another  unclouded 
and  untroubled  day  before  one.  Liberty  is, 
after  all,  the  richest  gift  that  life  can  give. 


86  The  Silent  Isle 

And  now,  having  made  this  panegyric  on 
solitude,  I  will  be  just  and  fair-minded,  and  I 
will  say  exactly  what  I  have  found  the  dis- 
advantages to  be. 

In  the  first  place,  though  I  do  not  grow  mor- 
bid, I  find  a  loss  of  proportion  creeping  over  me. 
I  attach  an  undue  importance  to  small  things. 
A  troublesome  letter,  which  in  a  busy  life  one 
would  answer  and  forget,  rattles  in  the  mind 
like  a  pea  in  a  bladder.  A  little  incident — say, 
for  instance,  that  one  has  to  find  fault  with  a 
servant — assumes  altogether  unreal  importance. 
In  a  busy  life  one  would  make  up  one 's  mind  as 
well  as  one  could,  and  act.  But  here  it  is  not 
easy  to  make  up  one's  mind.  One  weighs  all 
contingencies  too  minutely;  one  is  too  con- 
siderate, if  that  is  possible,  and  if  one  makes  up 
one's  mind,  perhaps,  to  find  fault,  the  presence 
in  the  house  of  a  dissatisfied  person  is  an  undue 
weight  on  the  mind.  Or  one  reads  an  unfavour- 
able review,  and  is  too  much  occupied  with  its 
possible  results  on  one's  literary  prospects.  It 
is  not  depression  that  these  things  induce,  but 
one  expends  too  much  energy  and  thought 
upon  them. 

But  this  on  the  whole  matters  little.  There 
is  time  to  be  slow  in  decision;  there  is  time 
to  forecast  possibilities.  Indeed,  it  is  an 
advantage  for  the  solitary  man  to  cultivate  an 
over-elaborate  way  of  considering  a  subject,  a 


Deliberation  87 

slow  picking-up  and  matching  of  patterns,  a 
maddening  deliberation,  simply  by  way  of 
recreation.  For  a  danger  of  solitude,  if  one 
likes  one 's  work,  is  that  one  works  too  much  and 
too  hard.  Then  one  writes  too  much,  forgets 
to  fill  the  cistern;  one  uses  up  the  old  phrases,  the 
old  ideas.  All  which  is  a  sore  temptation  to  a 
forgetful  writer  like  myself,  who  re-invents  and 
re-discovers  the  old  sentences  with  a  shock  of 
pleasing  novelty  and  originality,  only  to  find 
it  all  written  in  an  earlier  book. 

But  these  are  all  superficial  material  diffi- 
culties such  as  have  to  be  faced  in  every  life. 
The  real  and  dark  danger  of  solitude  is  the  self- 
absorption  that  is  bound  to  follow.  With  one 
like  myself,  to  whom  the  meeting  of  a  new 
person  is  a  kind  of  momentous  terror,  who  feels 
forced  instinctively  to  use  all  possible  arts  to 
render  a  clumsy  presence  and  a  heavy  manner 
bearable,  whose  only  hope  is  to  be  respectfully 
tolerated,  to  whom  society  is  not  an  easy  recrea- 
tion but  an  arduous  game,  who  would  always 
sooner  write  a  dozen  letters  than  have  an  inter- 
view, with  such  an  one  the  solitary  life  tends  to 
make  one  ghost-like  and  evasive  before  one's 
time.  Yet  it  is  not  for  nothing,  I  reflect,  that 
Providence  has  never  pushed  a  pawn  to  me  in  the 
shape  of  an  official  wife,  and  has  markedly  with- 
held me  from  nephews  and  nieces.  It  is  not  for 
nothing  that  relationships  with  others  appear  to 


88  The  Silent  Isle 

me  in  the  light  of  a  duty,  at  least  in  the  initial 
stages,  rather  than  a  pleasure. 

And  yet  I  reflect  that  I  should  doubtless  be 
a  better  man,  even  with  a  shrewish  wife  and 
a  handful  of  heavy,  unattractive  children.  I 
should  have  to  scheme  for  them,  to  make  things 
easier  for  them,  to  work  for  them,  to  recommend 
them,  to  cherish  them,  to  love  them.  These 
dear  transforming  burdens  are  denied  me. 
And  yet  would  the  sternest  and  severest  mentor 
in  the  world  bid  me  marry  without  love,  for  the 
sake  of  its  effect  on  my  character?  "No," 
he  would  say,  "not  that!  but  let  yourself  go,  be 
rash,  fall  in  love,  marry  in  haste!  It  is  your 
only  salvation. "  But  that  is  like  telling  a  dwarf 
that  it  is  his  only  salvation  to  be  six  feet  high — 
it  cannot  be  done  by  taking  thought.  No  one 
can  see  more  acutely  and  clearly,  in  more 
terrible  and  melancholy  detail,  than  myself 
what  one  misses.  Call  it  coldness,  call  it  indif- 
ference, call  it  cowardice — the  matter  is  not 
mended.  If  one  is  cold,  one  does  not  grow 
hot  by  pretending  to  perspire;  if  one  is  indiffer- 
ent, one  does  not  become  enthusiastic  by  indulg- 
ing in  hollow  rhetoric.  If  one  is  cowardly,  one 
can  only  improve  by  facing  a  necessary  danger, 
not  by  thrusting  oneself  into  perilous  situations. 
To  marry  without  love,  for  the  sake  of  the  dis- 
cipline, is  as  if  a  dizzy  man  should  adventure 
himself  alone  upon  the  Matterhorn;  the  rash- 


Self-Discipline  89 

ness  of  proved  incapacity  is  not  courage,  but  a 
detestable  snobbishness.  One  must  make  the 
best  of  the  hard  problem  of  God,  not  add  to  its 
complexity,  in  order  to  increase  one 's  patience. 
Neither  men  nor  angels  have  any  patience  with 
a  fool,  and  it  is  the  deed  of  a  fool  to  cultivate 
occasions  of  folly.  One  serves  best  by  making 
the  most  of  one's  faculties,  not  by  choos- 
ing a  life  where  one's  disabilities  have  full 
play,  in  order  to  correct  them.  I  might  as 
well  tell  the  Pharisee,  who  bids  me  let  myself 
go,  to  take  to  drink,  in  order  that  he  may  learn 
moral  humility,  or  to  do  dishonest  things  for 
the  discipline  of  reprobation.  I  do  not  think  so 
ill  of  God  as  not  to  believe  that  he  is  trying  to 
help  me;  as  the  old  poet  said,  "The  Gods  give 
to  each  man  whatever  is  most  appropriate  to 
him.  Man  is  dearer  to  the  Gods  than  to  him- 
self." God  has  sent  me  many  gifts,  both 
good  and  evil;  but  he  has  not  sent  me  a  wife, 
perhaps  in  pity  for  a  frail  creature  of  his  hand, 
who  might  have  had  to  bear  that  tedious  fate! 
But  I  know  what  I  miss,  and  see  that  loveless 
self-interest  is  the  dark  bane  of  solitude.  One 
may  call  it  a  moral  leprosy  if  one  loves  hard 
names;  but  no  leper  would  choose  to  be  a  leper 
if  he  could  avoid  it.  Whatever  happens  in  this 
dim  world,  we  should  be  tender  and  compassion- 
ate of  one  another.  It  is  a  mere  stupidity, 
that  stupidity  which  is  of  the  nature  of  sin,  to 


90  The  Silent  Isle 

compassionate  a  man  for  being  ill  or  poor,  and 
not  to  compassionate  him  for  being  cold  and 
lonely.  The  solitary  man  must  dwell  within 
his  own  shadow,  and  make  what  sport  he  can; 
and  it  is  the  saddest  of  all  the  privileges  of 
reasoning  beings,  that  reason  can  thus  debar 
a  man  from  wholesome  experience.  Even  in 
the  desolation  of  ruined  Babylon  the  satyr 
calls  to  his  fellow  and  the  great  owl  rears  her 
brood;  tut  the  narrow  and  shivering  soul  must 
sit  in  solitude,  till  perhaps  on  a  day  of  joy  he 
may  see  the  background  of  his  dark  heart  all 
alive  with  a  tapestry  of  shining  angels,  bearing 
vials  in  their  hands  of  the  water  of  Life. 


XII 

I  wonder  if  others  experience  a  very  peculiar 
sensation,  which  comes  upon  me  at  intervals 
unexpectedly  and  inexplicably  in  a  certain  kind 
of  scene,  and  on  reading  a  certain  type  of  book 
— I  have  known  it  from  my  early  childhood,  as 
far  back  as  I  can  recollect  anything.  It  is  the 
sensation  of  being  quite  close  to  some  beautiful 
and  mysterious  thing  which  I  have  lost,  and  for 
which  in  a  blind  way  I  am  searching.  It  con- 
tains within  it  a  vague  yet  poignant  happiness, 
a  rich  and  unknown  experience.  It  is  the 
nearest  I  ever  come  to  a  sense  of  pre-existence ; 
and  I  have  sometimes  wondered  if  it  might  not 
be,  not  perhaps  my  own  pre-existence  but 
some  inherited  recollection  of  happiness  in 
which  I  myself  had  no  part,  but  which  was 
part  of  the  mind  of  one,  or  of  many,  from  whom  I 
derive  my  origin.  If  limbs  and  features,  quali- 
ties and  desires,  are  derived  from  one 's  ancestors, 
why  should  one  not  also  derive  a  touch  of  their 
happy  dreams,  their  sweet  remembrances? 

The  first  time  it  ever  came  to  me  was  when  we 
were  taken,  quite  as  small  children,  to  a  little 

91 


92  The  Silent  Isle 

cottage  which  stood  in  a  clearing  of  a  great 
pine-wood  near  Wellington  College.  I  sup- 
pose that  the  cottage  was  really  older  than  the 
wood;  it  was  guarded  by  great  sprawling  laurels, 
and  below  the  house  was  a  privet-hedged 
garden,  sheltered  all  round  by  the  pines,  with 
a  stream  at  the  foot.  The  sun  lay  very  warm 
on  the  vegetable  beds  and  orchard  trees,  and 
there  was  a  row  of  hives — not  painted  cupboards 
such  as  one  now  sees,  but  big  egg-shaped  things 
made  of  a  rope  of  twisted  straw — round  which 
on  warm  days  the  humming  bees  made  a  low 
musical  note,  that  rose  and  fell  as  the  numbers 
increased  or  diminished.  I  suppose  my  nurse 
went  to  buy  honey  there — we  called  it  The 
Honey-woman's  Cottage.  I  dimly  remember 
an  old,  smiling,  wrinkled  woman  opening  the 
door  to  us,  summoning  my  nurse  in  to  a  mysteri- 
ous talk,  and  inviting  us  to  go  into  the  garden 
meanwhile.  The  whole  proceeding  was  in- 
tensely mysterious  and  beautiful.  Through 
the  red  pine  stems  one  could  see  the  sandy  soil 
rising  and  falling  in  low  ridges,  strewn  with 
russet  needles.  Down  below,  nearer  to  the 
stream,  a  tough  green  sword-grass  grew  richly ; 
and  beyond  lay  the  deep  wood,  softly  sighing, 
and  containing  all  sorts  of  strange  scents  and 
haunting  presences.  In  the  garden  there  was 
a  penetrating  aromatic  smell  from  the  box- 
hedges  and  the  hot  vegetable-beds.     We  wan- 


Romance  93 

dered  about,  and  it  used  to  seem  to  me,  I 
remember,  like  the  scenes  in  which  some  of 
Grimm's  fairy-tales  were  enacted.  I  suppose 
that  the  honey-woman  was  the  wife  of  a  wood- 
man and  was  a  simple  soul  enough;  but  there 
was  something  behind  it  all;  she  knew  more 
than  she  would  say.  Strange  guests  drew 
nigh  to  the  cottage  at  nightfall,  and  the  very 
birds  of  the  place  had  sad  tales  to  tell.  But  it 
was  not  that  I  connected  it  with  anything 
definite — it  was  just  the  sense  of  something 
narrowly  eluding  me,  which  was  there,  but  which 
I  could  not  quite  perceive.  There  were  other 
places,  too,  that  gave  me  the  same  sense — one 
a  big  dark  pool  in  the  woods,  with  floating 
water-lilies;  it  was  there,  too,  that  mysterious 
presence;  and  it  was  to  be  experienced  also  at 
the  edge  of  a  particular  covert,  a  hanging  wood 
that  fell  steeply  from  the  road,  where  the  ferns 
glittered  with  a  metallic  light  and  the  flies 
buzzed  angrily  in  the  thicket. 

And  there  have  been  places  since  where  the 
same  sense  has  come  strongly  upon  me.  One 
was  a  glade  in  Windsor  Forest,  just  to  be 
reached  by  a  rapid  walk  from  Eton  on  a  half- 
holiday  afternoon;  it  was  a  wide  grassy  place, 
with  a  few  old  oaks  in  it,  gnarled  and  withered; 
and  over  the  tree-tops  was  a  glimpse  of  distant 
blue  swelling  hills.  Even  now  the  same  sensa- 
tion comes  back  to  me,  more  rarely  but  not  less 


94  The  Silent  Isle 

keenly,  at  smoke  going  up  from  the  chimney  of 
an  unseen  house  surrounded  by  woods,  and 
certain  effects  of  sunset  upon  lonely  woodsides 
and  far-off  bright  waters.  It  comes  with  a 
sudden  yearning,  and  a  sense,  too,  of  some 
personal  presence  close  at  hand,  a  presence 
that  feels  and  loves  and  would  manifest  itself 
if  it  could — one  with  whom  I  have  shared 
happiness  and  peace,  one  in  whose  eyes  I  have 
looked  and  in  whose  arms  I  have  been  folded. 
But  the  thing  is  so  utterly  removed  from  any 
sense  of  desire  or  passion  that  I  can  hardly 
describe  it.  It  gives  a  sense  of  long  summer 
days  spent  in  innocent  experience,  with  no  need 
of  word  or  sign.  There  is  no  sense  of  stirring 
adventure,  of  exultation,  or  pride  about  it — 
it  is  just  an  infinite  untroubled  calm,  of  beauti- 
ful things  perceived  in  a  serenity  untroubled  by 
memory  or  hope,  by  sorrow  or  fear.  Its  quality 
lies  in  its  eternity;  there  is  no  beginning  or  end 
about  it,  no  opening  or  closing  door.  There 
seems  nothing  to  explain  or  reconcile  in  it;  the 
heart  is  content  to  wonder,  and  has  no  desire  to 
understand.  There  is  in  it  none  of  the  shadow 
of  happy  days,  past  and  gone,  embalmed  in  mem- 
ory; no  breath  of  the  world  comes  near  it,  no 
thought  of  care  or  anxiety,  no  ugly  shadows  of 
death  or  silence.  It  seems  when  it  comes  like 
the  only  true  thing  in  the  world,  the  only  per- 
fectly  pure   thing,   like    light   or   sweet   sound. 


The  Secret  95 

And  yet  it  has  always  the  sense  that  it  is  not  yet 
quite  found,  that  it  is  there  waiting  for  a 
moment  to  declare  itself,  within  reach  of  the 
hand  and  yet  unattained.  It  is  so  real  that  it 
makes  me  doubt  the  reality  of  everything  else 
in  the  world,  and  it  removes  for  an  instant  all 
sense  of  the  jarring  and  inharmonious  elements 
of  life,  the  pitiful  desires,  the  angers  and  cold- 
nesses of  fellow-mortals,  the  selfish  claims  of 
one's  own  timid  heart  and  mind. 

It  came  to  me  for  a  moment  to-day  in  my 
little  orchard  deep  in  high-seeded  grass:  a 
breeze  came  and  went,  stirring  the  leaves  of  the 
trees  and  bowing  the  tall  grasses  with  its  flying 
footsteps;  a  bird  broke  out  in  a  bush  into  a 
jocund  trill  of  song,  as  if  triumphing  in  the  joy- 
ful sight  of  something  that  was  hidden  from  my 
eyes.  If  I  could  but  have  caught  and  held  the 
secret,  how  easily  it  would  have  solved  my  own 
perplexities,  how  faithfully  would  I  have  whis- 
pered it  in  men's  ears;  but  while  I  wondered,  it 
was  gone  like  the  viewless  passage  of  an  angel, 
and  left  me  with  my  longing  unfulfilled,  my 
yearning  unsatisfied. 


XIII 

I  have  been  spending  some  days  in  town,  on 
business ;  I  have  been  sitting  on  two  committees, 
I  have  given  a  lecture,  I  have  attended  a  public 
dinner;  and  now  I  have  come  back  gratefully  to 
my  hermitage.  I  got  home  in  the  evening;  it  is 
winter,  but  unusually  warm;  and  the  birds  were 
fluting  in  the  bushes,  as  I  walked  round  the 
garden  in  the  twilight,  as  though  they  had  an 
inkling  of  the  Spring;  to  hear  them  gave  me  a 
sort  of  delicious  pain,  I  hardly  know  why. 
They  seemed  to  speak  to  me  of  old  happy  hours 
that  have  long  folded  their  wings,  of  bright 
pleasant  days,  lightly  regarded,  easily  spent, 
shut  into  the  volumes  of  the  past.  "I  see,"  as 
the  Psalmist  said,  "that  all  things  come  to  an 
end."  There  is  something  artificial  about  the 
soft  sadness  that  one  feels,  and  yet  it  is  per- 
fectly natural  and  instinctive;  it  is  not  as  if  I 
were  melancholy  or  unhappy;  my  life  is  full  of 
active  enjoyment,  and  I  am  in  that  mood  of 
delightful  tranquillity  which  comes  of  having 
finished  a  tiresome  series  of  engagements  which 
I  had  anticipated  without  pleasure.     It  is  not 

96 


Retrospect  97 

the  sense  only  of  vanished  days;  nor  is  it  the 
sense  of  not  having  realised  their  joy  fulness  at 
the  time;  it  is  a  deeper  regret  than  that;  it  is 
the  shadow  of  the  uncertainty  as  to  what  will 
ultimately  become  of  our  individuality.  If  one 
was  assured  of  immortality,  of  permanence,  of 
growth,  of  progress,  these  regrets  would  fall  off 
from  one  as  gently  as  withered  leaves  float  from 
a  tree;  or  rather,  one  would  never  think  of 
them;  but  now  one  has  the  sense  of  a  certain 
number  of  beautiful  days  dealt  out  to  one  by 
God,  and  the  knowledge  that  they  are  spent  one 
by  one. 

Another  strange  thing  about  the  retrospec- 
tive sadness  of  the  vanished  past  is  that  it  is  not 
the  memorable  days  of  life,  as  a  rule,  whose 
passing  one  regrets.  One  would  not,  I  think, 
wish  to  have  one's  days  of  triumph,  of  success, 
or  even  the  days  when  one  was  conscious  of  an 
extreme  personal  happiness,  back  again.  Partly 
it  is  that  one  seems  to  have  appreciated  their 
quality  and  crushed  out  their  sweetness — partly, 
too,  there  mingles  with  days  of  extreme  and 
conscious  bliss  a  certain  fever  of  the  spirit,  a 
certain  strain  of  excitement,  that  is  not  wholly 
pleasurable.  No,  the  days  that  one  rather 
desires  to  have  again  are  the  days  of  tranquil 
and  easy  contentment,  when  the  old  home- 
circle  was  complete,  and  when  one  hardly 
guessed  that  one  was  happy  at  all,  and  did  not 


98  The  Silent  Isle 

perceive — how  could  one? — as  life  rose  serenely 
and  strongly  to  its  zenith,  what  the  pains  and 
shadows  of  the  declining  life  might  be.  And 
yet  more  strange  is  it  that  the  memory,  by 
some  subtle  alchemy,  has  the  power  of  involving 
in  a  delicate  golden  mist  days  of  childhood  and 
boyhood  which  one  knows  as  a  matter  of  fact 
not  to  have  been  happy.  For  instance,  my  own 
memory  continues  to  clothe  my  early  school- 
days with  a  kind  of  sunlit  happiness,  though  I 
was  not  only  not  consciously  happy,  but  dis- 
tinctly and  consciously  unhappy.  But  memory 
refuses  to  retain  the  elements  of  unhappiness, 
the  constant  apprehension,  that  hung  over  one 
like  a  cloud,  of  punishment,  and  even  ill-usage. 
I  was  not  unduly  punished  at  school,  and  I  was 
certainly  never  ill-used.  But  one  saw  others 
suffer,  and  my  own  sensitive  and  timid  nature 
perpetually  foreboded  disaster.  Day  after  day 
as  a  little  boy  I  longed  for  home  surroundings 
and  home  affections  as  eagerly  as  the  hart 
desires  the  water-brooks.  But  memory  pushes 
all  that  aside,  and  obstinately  insists  on  regard- 
ing the  whole  period  in  an  idyllic  and  buoyant 
light. 

I  walk  round  the  borders,  which  are  all  full  of 
the  little  glossy  spikes  of  snowdrops  pushing  up, 
struggling  through  the  crusted  earth.  The  sad 
hero  of  Maud  walked  "in  a  ghastly  glimmer," 
and  found  "the  shining  daffodil  dead."     I  walk 


Society  99 

in  the  soft  twilight,  that  is  infinitely  tender, 
soothing,  and  sweet,  and  find  the  daffodil  taking 
on  his  new  life;  and  there  rises  in  my  heart  an 
uplifted  yearning,  not  so  much  for  the  good  days 
that  are  dead,  but  that  I  may  somehow  come  to 
possess  the  peace  that  underlies  the  memory  of 
them  all — not  handle  it  for  a  moment  and  lay  it 
down,  but  possess  it  or  be  possessed  by  it  for 
ever. 

Yet  these  busy  days  through  which  I  have  been 
passing  are  good  for  me,  I  believe.  I  have 
seen  and  talked  to  a  number  of  people;  and  so 
far  from  finding  that  my  solitary  life  makes  me 
unfit  for  society,  I  think  that  it  gives  me  a  good- 
humoured  contentment  in  the  interchange  of 
talk  and  argument,  which  I  lacked  in  old  days 
when  I  was  fighting  for  my  position.  The 
things  seem  to  matter  so  little  to  me  now.  I 
do  not  care  in  the  least  what  impression  I  make, 
so  long  as  people  are  kind  and  friendly.  Life  is 
no  longer  a  race,  where  I  wish  to  get  ahead  of 
others;  it  is  a  pilgrimage  in  which  we  are  all 
alike  bound.  But  it  is  good  for  me  to  be  in  the 
middle  of  it  all,  not  only  because  of  the  contrast 
which  it  presents  to  the  life  I  have  chosen,  but 
because  it  is  like  the  strong  scour  of  a  current 
sweeping  through  the  mind  and  leaving  it 
clean  and  sweet.  The  danger  of  the  quiet  life 
is  that  one  gets  too  comfortable,  too  indolent. 
It  does  me  good  to  have  to  mix  with  people,  to 


ioo  The  Silent  Isle 

smile  and  bow,  to  try  and  say  the  right  thing,  to 
argue  a  point  courteously,  to  weigh  an  op- 
ponent's arguments,  to  make  efforts,  to  go 
where  I  do  not  desire  to  go;  and  I  have  no 
longer  an  axe  of  my  own  to  grind;  I  only  desire 
that  the  right  conclusion  should  be  reached. 

But  the  things  which  people  consider  amusing 
and  entertaining  bewilder  me  more  and  more. 
I  went  to  an  evening  party  on  one  of  the  even- 
ings I  spent  in  town.  There  was  a  suite  of  fine 
rooms,  hung  with  beautiful  pictures  and  full  of 
works  of  art.  A  courteous  host  and  hostess 
received  us,  said  a  few  amiable  words  to  each, 
and  passed  us  on  into  the  rooms:  we  circulated, 
stood,  sate,  looked,  talked.  I  suppose  it  is  a  ques- 
tion of  temperament,  but  I  felt  that  every  sin- 
gle element  of  social,  intellectual,  and  aesthetic 
pleasure  was  absent  from  the  scene.  One  had 
no  time  to  look  at  the  beautiful  things  that 
leaned  and  beckoned  from  the  walls.  There 
was  no  chance  of  quiet,  reasonable  talk;  one 
pumped  up  a  few  inanities  to  person  after  per- 
son. I  suppose  that  most  of  the  guests  would 
not  have  come  if  they  did  not  at  all  events 
think  it  amused  them ;  but  what  was  the  charm  ? 
I  suppose  that  to  most  of  the  guests  it  was  the 
stir,  the  light,  the  moving  figures — for  there 
were  many  beautiful  and  stately  women  and 
distinguished  men  present — the  sense  of  com- 
pany, warmth,  success,  about  it  all.     To  me  it 


Society  101 

was  merely  distracting — a  score  of  sources  of 
pleasure,  and  all  of  them  preventing  the  enjoy- 
ment of  each.  I  think  I  am  probably  more 
and  not  less  sensitive  to  all  these  fine  and  rare 
things  than  perhaps  most  people ;  and  I  suppose 
it  is  this  very  sensitiveness  that  makes  me 
averse  to  them  all  in  mass.  It  is  to  me  like  the 
jangling  of  all  the  strings  of  some  musical 
instrument.  I  felt  that  I  could  have  lingered 
alone  in  these  fine  rooms,  wandering  from  pic- 
ture to  picture  with  a  lively  pleasure.  There 
were  many  people  present  with  whom  I  should 
have  deeply  enjoyed  a  tete-a-tete.  But  the 
whole  effect  was  like  over-eating  oneself,  like 
having  to  taste  a  hundred  exquisite  dishes  in  a 
single  meal.  I  do  not  protest  against  such 
gatherings  on  principle ;  if  they  give  the  guests  a 
sense  of  pleasure  and  well-being,  I  have  not  a 
word  to  say  against  it  all.  But  I  believe  in  my 
heart  that  there  are  many  people  who  do  not 
really  enjoy  it,  or  enjoy  it  only  in  a  purely  con- 
ventional way ;  and  what  I  should  like  to  do  is  to 
assist  the  people  whose  enjoyment  of  it  is  con- 
ventional, to  find  out  simple/  and  more  real 
sources  of  happiness;  because  to  make  these 
great  houses  possible  there  is  a  vast  amount  of 
patient  and  unpraised  human  labour  wasted. 
I  do  not  think  labour  is  wasted  in  producing 
beautiful  things,  so  long  as  they  can  have  an 
effect;  but  a  superabundance  of  beauty  has  no 


102  The  Silent  Isle 

effect — no  effect,  at  least,  that  could  not  be 
produced  by  things  less  costly  of  effort  and 
skill.  The  very  refreshments,  which  hardly 
any  one  touched,  stand  for  an  amount  of  wasted 
labour  which  might  have  given  pleasure  to  the 
poor  toilers  who  produced  them.  Think  of  the 
ransacking  of  different  climates,  of  the  ships 
speeding  over  the  sea,  the  toil  of  gatherers, 
porters,  cooks,  servers,  that  went  to  fit  out  that 
sparkling  buffet.  I  suppose  that  it  is  easy  for 
me,  who  do  not  value  the  result,  to  be  mildly 
socialistic  about  these  things;  the  pathos  is  not 
in  the  work,  but  in  the  waste  of  the  work,  not  in 
the  delicate  things  collected  for  our  use  and  how- 
ever fitfully  enjoyed,  but  in  the  things  made 
and  collected  by  unknown  toilers,  and  then 
either  not  used  at  all  or  not  consciously  enjoyed. 
And  so  it  is  with  a  heightened  relish  for  the 
serener  simplicities  of  life,  that  I  return  to  my 
quiet  rooms,  my  old  trees,  my  carelessly  ordered 
garden,  as  a  sailor  floats  into  the  calm  waters  of 
the  well-known  haven  out  of  the  plunge  and 
surf  of  the  sea.  There  is  no  strain  here  to  tor- 
ment me,  no  waste  to  afflict  me.  I  do  not  have 
to  spend  reluctant  hours  in  enjoyments  which 
I  do  not  enjoy;  I  am  not  overshadowed  by  the 
sense  of  engagements  which  I  am  bound  to 
keep.  Moreover,  I  can  return  to  the  beloved 
work  which  is  unwillingly  suspended  in  the 
bustle  of  town.     I  do  not  know  why  it  is  that  I 


Simplicity  103 

have  so  deep  a  sense  of  the  value  of  time,  when 
what  I  do  matters  so  little  to  any  one.  But  at 
least  I  have  here  the  sense  of  doing  work  that 
may  conceivably  minister  something  to  the  ser- 
vice of  others,  while  in  town  I  have  the  sense  of 
spending  hours  in  occupations  that  cannot  in 
any  way  benefit  others,  while  they  are  certainly 
no  satisfaction  to  myself. 

"In  hoc  portu  quiescit 
Si  quis  aquas  timet  inquietas," 

says  the  wistful  poet;  and  the  tossing  on  the 
waves  of  the  world  thus  gives  me  the  tonic  sense 
of  contrast  to  my  peaceful  life  which  it  would 
otherwise  lack.  It  is  the  salt  and  vinegar  of  the 
banquet,  lending  a  brisk  and  wholesome  savour 
to  what  might  otherwise  tend  to  become  vapid 
and  dull. 


XIV 

I  have  just  finished  a  book  and  despatched 
it  to  the  press.  It  is  rather  a  dreary  moment 
that !  At  first  one  has  a  sense  of  relief  at  having 
finished  a  task  and  set  down  a  burden,  but  that 
elation  lasts  only  for  a  day  or  two,  and  then  one 
begins  to  miss  one's  true  and  faithful  com- 
panion. This  particular  book  has  been  in  a 
special  sense  a  companion  to  me,  because  it  has 
been  a  book  out  of  my  own  mind  and  heart,  not 
a  book  undertaken  for  the  sake  of  diffusing 
useful  information,  but  a  book  of  which  I  con- 
ceived the  idea,  planned  the  structure,  and 
filled  up  the  detail.  It  has  almost  assumed  a 
personality.  It  has  hardly  been  absent  from 
my  thoughts  for  the  last  six  months.  It  has 
darted  into  my  mind  when  I  awoke ;  it  has  stood 
looking  over  my  shoulder  as  I  read,  pointing 
with  airy  finger  at  the  lines,  "There  is  a  thought 
for  you;  here  is  an  excellent  illustration  of  that 
point  you  could  not  make  clear. ' '  It  has  walked 
with  me  as  close  or  closer  than  my  shadow, 
until  it  has  become  a  real  thing,   a  being,  a 

friend,  like  myself  but  yet  not  quite  myself. 

104 


A  Book  Finished  105 

And  then  my  book,  as  I  read  it  through  for 
the  last  time,  is  all  full  of  gentle  and  tender 
associations.  This  chapter  brings  back  to  me  a 
day  of  fierce  wind  and  blustering  rain,  when  I 
walked  by  sodden  roads  and  whistling  hedges 
in  my  oldest  clothes,  till  they  hung  heavily 
about  me  and  creaked  as  I  moved ;  the  thought 
of  the  chapter  came  to  me,  I  remember,  when  I 
decided  that  I  had  been  far  enough  for  health 
and  even  for  glory,  and  when  I  fled  back  before 
the  hooligan  wind;  then  followed  a  long,  quiet, 
firelit  evening  when  I  abandoned  myself  in 
luxurious  ease  to  my  writing,  till  the  drowsy 
clock  struck  the  small  hours  of  the  morning. 
Then  another  chapter  is  all  scented  with  the 
breath  of  roses,  that  stole  into  my  windows  on  a 
still  summer  evening;  at  another  point  the  page 
is  almost  streaked  and  stained  for  me  with  the 
sorrowful  tidings  which  came  to  me  in  the  mid- 
dle of  a  sentence;  when  I  took  up  my  writing 
again  some  days  after,  it  seemed  as  though 
there  was  a  deep  trench  between  me  and  my 
former  self.  And  again  another  chapter  was 
written  in  all  the  glow  of  a  beautiful  and  joyful 
experience,  in  a  day  of  serene  gladness  which 
made  me  feel  that  it  was  worth  while  to  have 
lived,  even  if  the  world  should  hold  nothing  else 
that  was  happy  for  me. 

Thus,  then,  and  thus  has  my  life  transferred 
itself  to  these  pages,  till  they  are  all  full  for  me 


106  The  Silent  Isle 

of  joy  and  sorrow,  of  experience  and  delight. 
I  suppose  that  a  painter  and  a  musician  have  the 
same  tenderness  about  their  work,  though  it 
seems  to  me  impossible  that  their  life  can  have 
so  flowed  into  picture  or  song  as  my  life  has 
flowed  into  my  book.  The  painter  has  had  to 
transcribe  what  he  sees,  the  musician  to  capture 
the  delicate  intervals  that  have  thrilled  his 
inner  ear — but  if  the  painter 's  thought  has  been 
absorbed  in  the  forms  that  he  is  depicting,  if 
the  musician  has  lost  himself  among  the  airy 
harmonies,  the  sweet  progressions,  these  things 
must  have  drawn  them  away  from  life,  and 
secluded  them  in  a  paradise  of  emotion;  but 
with  me  it  has  been  different;  for  it  is  life  itself 
that  has  palpitated  in  my  pages,  my  very 
heart's  blood  has  been  driven  by  eager  pulsa- 
tions through  sentence  and  phrase;  and  the 
book  is  thus  a  part  of  myself  in  a  way  in  which 
no  picture  and  no  melody  can  be.  I  have  some- 
thing, I  think,  of  the  joy  of  the  mother  over  her 
child,  the  child  that  has  lain  beneath  her  bosom 
and  been  nourished  from  her  heart;  and  now 
that  my  book  is  to  leave  me,  it  is  a  part  of  my- 
self that  goes  into  the  world  of  men. 

And  now  I  shall  pass  vague  and  dreary  days, 
until  the  seed  of  life  again  quickens  within  me, 
and  till  I  know  again  that  I  have  conceived 
another  creature  of  the  mind.  Dreary  days, 
because  the  mind,   relieved  of  its  sweet  toil, 


A  Book  Finished  107 

flaps  loose  and  slack  like  a  drooping  sail.  I 
am  weary,  too,  not  with  a  pleasant  physical 
weariness,  but  with  the  weariness  of  one  who  has 
spent  a  part  of  life  too  swiftly.  For  the  joy  of 
such  work  as  mine  is  so  great  that  there  seems 
nothing  like  it  in  the  world;  and  the  hours  are 
vain  and  listless  that  are  not  so  comforted. 
Now  I  shall  make  a  dozen  beginnings,  not  fore- 
seeing the  end,  and  I  shall  abandon  them  in 
despair.  The  beauties  of  the  earth,  the  golden 
sunlight,  the  crimson  close  of  day,  the  leaping 
streams,  the  dewy  grass  will  call  in  vain.  Books 
and  talk  alike  will  seem  trivial  and  meaningless 
tattle,  ministering  to  nothing. 

And  then  my  book  will  begin  to  return  to  me 
in  printed  pages.  Sometimes  that  is  a  joy,  when 
it  seems  better  than  one  knew ;  sometimes  it  is 
a  disgust,  if  one  has  passed  swiftly  out  of  the 
creative  mood;  and  then  it  will  be  lost  to  me 
for  a  time  while  it  is  drest  and  adorned,  to  walk 
abroad;  till  it  comes  back  like  a  stranger  in  its 
new  guise. 

And  then  comes  what  is  the  saddest  experience 
of  all ;  it  will  pass  into  the  hands  of  friends  and 
readers;  echoes  of  it  will  come  back  to  me,  in 
talk  and  print ;  but  it  will  no  longer  be  the  book 
I  knew  and  loved,  only  a  part  of  my  past. 
And  this  is  the  hardest  thing  of  all  for  a  writer, 
that  when  others  read  one's  book  they  take  it 
for  the  flash  of  a  present  mood,  while  the  writer 


108  The  Silent  Isle 

of  it  will  only  see  in  it  a  pale  reflection  of  a  time 
long  past,  and  will  feel  perhaps  even  farther 
away  from  his  book  than  those  who  criticise  it, 
however  severely.  If  my  book  is  criticised  as  I 
write  it,  or  directly  after  I  have  written  it,  it  is 
as  though  I  were  myself  maltreated;  but  when 
it  appears  so  belatedly,  I  am  often  the  harshest 
critic  of  all,  because  my  whole  point  of  view  may 
perhaps  have  shifted,  and  I  may  be  no  longer  the 
man  who  wrote  the  book,  but  a  man  of  larger 
experience,  who  can  judge  perhaps  more  securely 
than  any  one  else  how  far  behind  life  the  book 
lags.  There  is  no  season  in  the  world  in  which 
the  mind  travels  faster  from  its  standpoint  than 
when  it  has  finished  a  book,  because  during  all 
the  writing  of  it  one  has  kept,  as  it  were,  tensely 
and  constrainedly  at  a  certain  point;  and  so 
when  freedom  comes,  the  thought  leaps  hur- 
riedly forward,  like  a  weight  lifted  by  an  elastic 
cord  that  has  been  stretched  almost  to  break- 
ing. "Can  I  ever  have  thought  or  felt  so?" 
the  mind  says  to  itself,  scanning  the  pages;  and 
thus  a  book,  which  is  mistaken  for  the  very 
soul  of  a  man,  is  often  no  more  like  the  man  him- 
self than  a  dusty,  sunburnt  picture  that  repre- 
sents what  he  was  long  years  before. 

But  to-day  my  only  thought  is  that  the  little 
companion  whom  I  loved  so  well,  who  has  walked 
and  sate,  eaten  and  drunk,  gone  in  and  out 
with  me,  silent  and  smiling,  has  left  me  and 


A  Book  Finished  109 

departed  to  try  his  fortune  in  the  rough  world. 
How  will  he  fare?  how  will  he  be  greeted?  And 
yet  I  know  that  when  he  returns  to  me,  saying, 
"I  am  a  part  of  yourself,"  I  shall  be  apt  to  deny 
it.  For  whereas  now,  if  my  child  is  lame  or 
feeble  or  pitiful  or  blind,  I  love  him  the  better 
that  he  is  not  strong  and  active;  when  he  returns 
I  shall  have  a  clear  eye  for  his  faults  and  weak- 
nesses, and  shall  wish  him  other  than  he  will  be. 
Sometimes  I  have  talked  with  the  writers  of 
books,  and  they  have  told  me  of  the  misery  and 
agony  that  the  composition  of  a  book  has 
brought  them.  They  speak  of  hot  and  cold 
fits ;  of  times  when  they  write  fiercely  and  eagerly, 
and  of  times  when  they  cannot  set  down  a  line 
to  their  mind;  days  of  despair  when  they  hate 
and  despise  the  book;  days  when  they  cannot 
satisfy  themselves  about  a  single  word;  all  this 
is  utterly  unknown  to  me;  once  embarked  upon 
a  book,  I  have  neither  hesitation  nor  fear.  To 
sit  down  to  it,  day  after  day,  and  to  write,  is 
like  sitting  down  to  talk  with  one's  nearest 
friend,  where  no  concealment  or  diplomacy  is 
necessary,  but  where  one  can  say  exactly  what 
comes  into  the  mind,  with  no  fear  of  being  mis- 
understood. I  have  not  the  smallest  difficulty 
about  expressing  exactly  as  I  wish  to  express  it, 
whatever  is  in  my  mind.  When  I  fail,  it  is  be- 
cause the  thought  itself  is  incomplete,  imperfect, 
obscure;  yet  as  I  write,  weariness  and  dissatis- 


no  The  Silent  Isle 

faction  are  unknown.  I  cannot  imagine  how 
any  one  can  write  a  book  without  loving  the 
toil,  such  as  it  is.  Probably  that  is  because  I 
am  indolent  or  pleasure-loving.  I  do  not  see 
how  work  of  this  kind  can  be  done  at  all  in  a 
spirit  of  heaviness.  It  may  be  a  fine  moral  dis- 
cipline to  do  a  dreaded  thing  heavily  and  faith- 
fully; but  what  hope  is  there  of  the  work  being 
tinged  with  delight?  It  is  as  though  a  tired  man 
set  out  ^o  make  a  butterfly  out  of  cardboard 
and  gum  and  powered  silks;  it  would  be  nothing 
when  it  wa;  made.  A  book  must,  before  all 
things,  have  vigour;  and  vigour  cannot  be 
germinated  by  a  sense  of  duty;  it  can  only 
spring  from  hope  and  confidence  and  desire. 

But  now,  to-day,  my  darling  has  gone  from 
me;  he  is  jolting  in  some  dusty  van,  or  he  is  pro- 
pelled through  muddy  streets  in  a  red  box  on 
wheels;  or  perhaps  he  is  already  in  the  factory 
among  the  rattle  of  type  and  the  throb  of  the 
printing-press.  I  feel  like  a  father  whose  boy 
has  gone  to  school,  and  who  sits  wondering  how 
the  child  may  be  faring  in  the  big,  unfamiliar 
place.  Well,  I  will  not  grieve;  but  rather  I  will 
thank  the  Father  of  all  things  living,  the  inspirer 
of  all  sweet  and  delicate  thoughts,  all  pleasant 
fancies,  all  glowing  words,  for  the  joy  that  I 
have  had. 


XV 

In  one  respect  only  does  the  advance  of  age 
cast  a  shadow  over  my  mind ;  in  most  matters  it 
is  a  pure  gain.  Even  though  a  certain  peculiar 
quality  of  light-hearted  happiness  visits  me 
more  rarely — a  happiness  like  that  of  a  lark 
that  soars,  beats  her  wings,  and  trills  in  the 
blue  sky — yet  the  loss  is  more  than  compensated 
for  by  the  growth  of  an  equable  tranquillity, 
neither  rapturous  nor  sad,  which  abides  with  me 
for  long  spaces. 

But  here  is  the  secret  wound — clausum  pectore 
volnus ! — I  am  or  would  be  an  artist  in  words. 
Well,  when  I  look  round  at  the  work  of  the 
artists  whose  quality  I  envy  and  adore,  I  am 
struck  by  this  alarming  fact,  that  in  almost 
every  case  their  earliest  work  is  their  best  work. 

This  is  almost  invariably  true  in  one  parti- 
cular domain,  that  of  purely  imaginative  poeti- 
cal work.  By  which  I  do  not  mean  poetry  only, 
but  poetical  prose  like  Pater's,  poetical  fiction 
like  Charlotte  Bronte's;  I  think  that  a  narra- 
tive writer,  a  humorous  writer,  a  critical  writer,  a 
biographical  writer  may  continue  to  improve 

in 


ii2  The  Silent  Isle 

until  his  faculties  begin  to  decay.  He  may  get 
a  wider,  a  more  penetrating,  a  more  tolerant 
view  of  life;  his  style  may  gain  lucidity,  im- 
pressiveness,  incisiveness,  pungency;  but  in  the 
case  of  the  poetical  and  the  reflective  writer  it 
seems  to  me  that  something  evaporates — 
some  quite  peculiar  freshness,  naivete,  indis- 
creetness,  which  can  never  be  recaptured. 
Take  a  few  typical  instances.  Coleridge  lost  the 
poetical  gift  altogether  when  he  left  his  youth 
behind;  Wordsworth  wrote  all  his  best  poetry 
in  a  few  early  years;  Milton  lost  his  pure  lyric 
gift.  But  the  most  salient  instance  of  all  is 
Tennyson;  in  the  two  earliest  volumes  there  is 
a  perfectly  novel  charm,  a  grace,  a  daring 
which  he  lost  in  later  life.  He  became  solemn, 
mannerised,  conscious  of  responsibility.  Some- 
times, as  in  some  of  the  lyrics  of  Maud,  he  had  a 
flash  of  the  old  spirit.  But  compare  the  Idylls 
of  the  King,  for  all  their  dignity  and  lavish  art, 
their  sweet  cadences,  their  mellifluous  flow, 
with  the  early  fragment  in  the  same  manner,  the 
Morte  d' Arthur,  and  you  become  aware  that 
some  exquisite  haunted  quality  has  slipped 
away  from  the  later  work  which  made  the 
Morte  ds 'Arthur  one  of  the  most  perfect  poems 
of  the  century.  The  Morte  d' Arthur  is  seen, 
the  Idylls  are  laboriously  imagined.  The  Idylls, 
again,  are  full  of  an  everyday  morality — the 
praise     of     civic     virtues,     the     evolution     of 


Age  and  Poetry  113 

types — and  how  tiresome  they  thus  become! 
but  in  the  Morte  d' Arthur  there  is  only  a  pro- 
phetic mysticism,  which  is  all  the  more  noble 
because  it  is  so  remote  from  common  things. 

With  Browning  it  is  the  same  in  a  certain 
degree;  there  is  a  charm  about  Pauline,  for  all 
its  immaturity,  which  creates  an  irrepressible, 
uncalculating  mood  of  undefined  longing,  utterly 
absent  from  his  latest  work.  Perhaps  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  instances  is  that  of  Rossetti. 
In  the  course  of  the  House  of  Life,  the  dark 
curtain  of  the  exotic  mood,  with  its  strange 
odours  and  glimpses,  its  fallen  light,  its  fevered 
sense,  is  raised  at  intervals  upon  a  sonnet  of 
pure  transparency  and  delicate  sweetness,  as 
though  the  weary,  voluptuous  soul,  in  its  rest- 
less passage  among  perfumed  chambers,  looked 
out  suddenly  from  a  window  upon  some  forest 
glade,  full  of  cool  winds  and  winter  sunshine, 
and  stood  silent  awhile.  These  sonnets  will 
always  be  found  to  be  the  earlier  writings 
transplanted  into  the  new  setting. 

I  suppose  it  is  to  a  certain  extent  a  physical 
thing.  It  is  the  shadow  of  experience,  of 
familiarity,  of  weariness  that  creeps  over  the 
soul.  In  youth  the  spirit  expands  like  an  open- 
ing rose,  and  things  heard  and  seen  strike  upon 
the  senses  with  an  incredible  novelty  and  fresh- 
ness, hinting  at  all  sorts  of  sweet  surprises, 
joyful    secrets,    hopeful    mysteries.     It    is    the 


ii4  The  Silent  Isle 

subtle  charm  of  youth  that  evaporates,  the 
charm  that  makes  a  young  and  eager  boy  on 
the  threshold  of  manhood  so  interesting,  so 
delightful,  even  though  he  may  be  inarticulate 
and  immature  and  self-absorbed.  Who  does 
not  remember  friends  of  college  days,  graceful 
and  winning  creatures,  lost  in  the  sense  of  their 
own  significance,  who  had  nothing,  it  may  be, 
particular  to  say,  no  great  intellectual  grip,  no 
suggestiveness,  yet  moving  about  in  a  mysteri- 
ous paradise  of  their  own,  full  of  dumb  emotion, 
undefined  longing,  and  with  a  deep  sense  of  the 
romantic  possibilities  of  life.  Alas,  as  the  days 
move  on  and  the  crisis  delays,  as  life  brings 
the  need  of  labour,  the  necessity  of  earning 
money,  as  love  and  friendship  lose  their  rosy 
glow  and  settle  down  into  comfortable  relations, 
the  disillusionment  spreads  and  widens.  I  do 
not  say  that  the  nearer  view  of  life  is  not  more 
just,  more  wholesome,  more  manly.  It  is  but 
the  working  of  some  strictly  determined  law. 
The  dreams  fade,  become  unreal  and  unsub- 
stantial; though  not  rarely,  in  some  glimpse  of 
retrospect,  the  pilgrim  turns,  ascends  a  hillock 
by  the  road,  and  sees  the  far-off  lines,  the  quiet 
folds,  of  the  blue  heights  from  which  he  de- 
scended in  the  blithe  air  of  the  morning,  and 
knows  that  they  were  desirable.  Perhaps  the 
happiest  of  all  are  those  who,  as  the  weary  day 
advances,   can  catch  a  sight  of  some  no  less 


The  Pilgrimage  115 

beautiful  hills  ahead  of  him,  their  hollows  full 
of  misty  gold,  where  the  long  journey  may  end; 
and  then,  however  wearily  the  sun  falls  on  the 
dusty  road  and  the  hedged  fields  to  left  and  right, 
he  knows  that  the  secrets  of  the  earlier  day  are 
beautiful  secrets  still,  and  that  the  fine  wonder 
of  youth  has  yet  to  be  satisfied.  And  yet  the 
shadow  does  undoubtedly  fall  heavily  on  the  way 
for  me  and  for  such  as  me,  whose  one  hope  is 
that  before  they  die  they  may  make  some  deli- 
cate thing  of  beauty  and  delight  which  may 
remind  those  that  come  after  that  the  first 
beauty  of  opening  light  and  the  song  of  the 
awakening  bird  is  a  real  and  true  thing,  not  a 
mere  effect  of  air  and  sun  and  buoyant  spirit. 
Experience  and  fact  and  hard  truth  have  a 
beauty  of  their  own,  no  doubt.  Politics  and 
commerce,  the  growth  of  social  liberty  and 
law,  civic  duty  and  responsibility — dull  words 
for  noble  things — have  their  place,  their  value, 
their  significance.  But  to  the  poet  they  seem 
only  the  laborious  organising  of  his  dreams,  the 
slow  and  clumsy  manufacture  of  what  ought  to 
be  instinctive  and  natural.  If  the  world  must 
grow  upon  these  lines,  if  men  must  toil  in  smoke- 
stained  factories  or  wrangle  in  heated  Parlia- 
ments, then  it  is  well  that  the  framework  of  life 
should  be  made  as  firm,  as  compact,  as  just  as 
it  can.  But  not  here  does  his  hope  lie;  he 
looks  forward  to  a  far  different  regeneration  than 


n6  The  Silent  Isle 

can  be  effected  by  law  and  police.  He  looks 
forward  to  a  time  when  the  hearts  of  men 
shall  be  so  wise  and  tender  and  simple  that  they 
shall  smile  at  the  thought  that  life  needs  all 
this  organising  and  arranging.  For  those  who 
labour  for  social  good  lose  sight  too  often  of  the 
end  in  the  means.  They  think  of  education  as 
a  business  of  delightful  intricacy,  and  forget 
that  it  is  but  an  elaborate  device  for  teaching 
men  to  love  quiet  labour  and  to  enjoy  the  delight 
of  leisure.  They  lose  themselves  in  the  dry 
delight  of  codifying  law,  and  forget  that  law  is 
only  necessary  because  men  are  born  brutal 
and  selfish.  Morality  may  be  imposed  from 
without,  or  grace  may  grow  from  within;  and  the 
poet  is  on  the  side  of  the  inner  grace,  because  he 
thinks  that  if  it  can  be  achieved  it  will  outrun 
the  other  lightly  and  easily. 

But  as  we  journey  through  the  world,  as  we 
become  aware  of  the  meanness  and  selfishness  of 
men,  as  we  learn  to  fight  for  our  own  hand,  the 
high  vision  is  apt  to  fade.  Who  then  can  be 
more  sad  than  the  man  who  has  felt  in  the  depths 
of  his  soul  the  thrill  of  that  opening  light,  and 
the  further  that  he  journeys,  finds  more  and 
more  weary  persons  who  tell  him  insistently 
that  it  was  nothing  but  a  foolish  incident  of 
youth,  a  trick  of  fancy,  a  passing  mood,  and  that 
life  must  be  given  to  harder  and  more  sordid 
things?     It  is  well  for  him  if  he  can  resist  these 


The  Dew  of  the  Morning     117 

ugly  voices;  if  he  can  continue  to  discern  what 
there  is  of  generous  and  pure  in  the  hearts  of 
those  about  him,  if  he  can  persevere  in  believing 
that  life  does  hold  a  holy  and  sweet  mystery, 
and  that  it  is  not  a  mere  dreary  struggle  for  a 
little  comfort,  a  little  respect,  a  little  pleasure 
by  the  way.  It  is  upon  a  man's  power  of  hold- 
ing fast  to  undimmed  beauty  that  his  inner 
hopefulness,  his  power  of  inspiring  others,  de- 
pends. But  though  it  is  sad  to  see  some  artist 
who  has  tasted  of  the  morning  dew,  and  whose 
heart  has  been  filled  with  rapture,  trading  and 
trafficking,  in  conventional  expression  and  la- 
borious seriousness,  with  the  memories  of  those 
bright  visions,  it  is  sadder  far  to  see  a  man  turn 
his  back  cynically  upon  the  first  hope,  and 
declare  his  conviction  that  he  has  found  the 
unreality  of  it  all.  The  artist  must  pray  daily 
that  his  view  may  not  grow  clouded  and  soiled; 
and  he  must  be  ready,  too,  if  he  finds  the  voice 
grow  faint,  to  lay  his  outworn  music  by,  though 
he  does  it  in  utter  sadness  of  soul,  only  glad  if 
he  can  continue  sorrowful. 


XVI 

I  have  been  thinking  all  to-day,  for  no 
particular  reason  that  I  can  discover,  of  a  house 
where  I  spent  many  of  the  happiest  days  of  my 
life.  It  belonged  for  some  years  to  an  old  friend 
of  mine,  a  bachelor,  a  professional  man,  who 
used  to  go  there  for  his  holidays,  and  delighted 
to  gather  round  him  a  few  familiar  friends. 
Year  after  year  I  used  to  go  there,  sometimes 
twice  in  the  year,  for  long  periods  together. 
The  house  was  in  North  Wales:  it  stood  some- 
what above  the  plain  on  a  terrace  among  woods, 
at  the  base  of  a  long  line  of  dark  crags,  which 
showed  their  scarped  fronts,  with  worn  fantastic 
outlines,  above  the  trees  that  clustered  at  their 
feet  and  straggled  high  up  among  the  shoots  of 
stone.  The  view  from  the  house  was  of  extra- 
ordinary beauty.  There  was  a  flat  rich  plain 
below,  dotted  with  clumps  of  trees;  a  mountain 
rose  at  one  side,  a  rocky  ridge.  Through  the 
plain  a  slow  river  broadened  to  the  sea,  and  at 
the  mouth  stood  a  little  town,  the  smoke  of 
which  went  up  peacefully  on  still  days.  Across 
the   sea,    shadowy   headlands   of   remote   bays 

118 


A  House  of  Friendship        119 

stood  out  one  after  another  to  the  south.  The 
house  had  a  few  sloping  fields  below  it;  a  lawn 
embowered  in  trees,  and  a  pretty  old  walled 
garden,  where  the  sun- warmed  air  was  redolent 
with  the  homely  scent  of  old-fashioned  herbs 
and  flowers.  Several  little  steep  paths  mean- 
dered through  the  wood,  crossing  and  recrossing 
tiny  leaping  streams,  and  came  out  on  a  great 
tract  of  tumbled  moorland  above,  with  huge 
broad-backed  mountains  couched  about  it. 

The  house  itself  was  full  of  low,  pleasant 
rooms,  looking  out  on  to  a  wide  verandah. 
It  was  almost  austerely  furnished,  and  the  life 
was  simple  and  serene.  We  used  to  go  for 
vague  walks  on  the  moor  or  by  the  sea,  and 
sometimes  took  long  driving  and  walking  expedi- 
tions among  the  hills.  It  was  a  rainy  region, 
and  we  were  often  confined  to  the  house,  except 
for  a  brisk  walk  in  the  soft  rain.  The  climate 
never  suited  me;  I  was  always  languid  in  body 
there,  greedy  of  sleep  and  food.  There  was  no 
great  brilliance  of  talk,  only  a  quiet  ease  of  com- 
munication such  as  takes  place  among  people 
of  the  same  interests.  I  was  ill  there,  more  than 
once,  and  often  anxious  and  perplexed.  And 
yet,  for  all  that,  my  memory  persists  in  invest- 
ing it  all  with  a  singular  radiance,  and  tells  me 
over  and  over  again  that  I  was  never  so  happy 
in  any  place  in  my  life.  I  must  say  that  my 
friend   was    an   ideal   host,    quiet,    benevolent, 


120  The  Silent  Isle 

anxious  that  people  should  enjoy  themselves 
in  their  own  way,  and  yet  with  a  genial  firmness 
of  administration  which  is  the  greatest  of  all 
luxuries  if  it  co-exists  with  much  liberty.  He 
was  not  a  great  talker,  though  he  occasionally 
uttered  a  witty  epigram,  often  of  a  somewhat 
caustic  kind;  but  the  air  of  serene  benevolence 
with  which  he  used  to  preside  always  set  people 
at  their  ease.  There  was,  too,  another  friend, 
who  was  there  less  often,  but  who  shared  the 
expense  of  the  house,  who  was  a  singularly 
charming  and  stimulating  talker,  full  of  acute 
observation  and  emotional  appreciation  of 
character.  The  combination  of  the  two  was 
perfection. 

It  is  pleasant  to  recollect  the  long,  vague  sum- 
mer days  there,  the  mornings  spent  in  reading 
in  the  verandah,  the  afternoons  in  a  quiet 
ramble ;  not  less  delightful  were  the  short  winter 
days,  when  the  twilight  set  in  early,  and  the 
house  was  warm  and  softly  lit.  One  agreeable 
rule  was  that  after  dinner  any  one  who  felt 
inclined  should  read  rather  than  talk;  and  we 
have  often  sate  in  an  amiable  silence,  with 
the  fire  rustling  in  the  grate,  and  the  leaves  of 
books  being  softly  turned.  The  charm  was  the 
absence  of  constraint,  and  the  feeling  that  one 
could  say  exactly  what  came  into  one's  mind 
without  any  danger  of  being  misunderstood. 
But  for  all  that  I  cannot  quite  explain  the  golden 


A  Farewell  121 

content  that  seems  in  retrospect  to  have  over- 
spread the  whole  house.  We  were  often  frankly- 
critical.  We  did  not  spare  each  other's  weak- 
nesses; but  no  resentment,  no  dissatisfaction, 
no  strife  seems  to  me  ever  to  have  clouded  the 
sunny  atmosphere. 

It  all  came  to  an  end  some  years  ago ;  circum- 
stances made  it  necessary  for  my  friends  to  give 
up  the  house;  and  one  of  the  most  beautiful 
instances  of  the  spirit  of  the  place  was  on  the 
occasion  of  our  last  visit.  We  knew  that  the 
good  days  were  over,  and  that  our  lives  could 
never  be  quite  so  pleasantly  united  again;  but 
the  place  h^ld  us  under  its  spell;  and  I  remember 
as  I  drove  away  through  the  woods,  in  a  soft 
moist  dawn,  I  felt  nothing  but  a  deep  and  un- 
complaining gratitude  for  all  the  happiness 
that  I  had  enjoyed  there;  the  trees,  the  crags, 
the  embowered  lawn  with  its  smiling  flowers, 
the  verandah  with  its  chairs  piled  up  for  de- 
parture, the  dismantled  library,  all  seemed  to 
say  farewell  with  the  same  tenderness  with  which 
they  had  always  welcomed  us.  It  seemed 
impossible  to  regret  or  repine.  The  house 
would  receive  and  guard  and  comfort  other 
pilgrims  in  their  turn.  I  felt  that  any  sense 
of  sorrowful  loss  would  be  somehow  like  a  kind 
of  treachery,  a  peevish  ingratitude,  not  even 
to  be  entertained  in  thought,  much  less  ex- 
pressed ;  to  have  yielded  to  any  form  of  repining 


122  The  Silent  Isle 

would  have  been,  it  seemed  to  me,  like  spending 
the  last  few  minutes  of  a  visit,  where  one  had 
been  received  with  a  cordial  and  simple  hospi- 
tality, in  pointing  out  to  one's  host  the  incon- 
venience of  his  house. 

I  think  that  where  one  so  often  makes  a  mis- 
take in  life  is  in  thinking  of  the  beautiful  past 
as  over  and  done  with.  One  ought  to  think  of 
it  rather  as  existing.  It  can  no  more  be  lost 
than  any  other  beautiful  thing  or  fine  feeling 
can  be  lost.  The  flower  may  fade,  the  tree  may 
shed  its  leaf,  the  work  of  art  may  perish,  the 
great  poem  may  be  forgotten ;  the  lovely  ancient 
building,  with  all  the  grace  of  tradition  and 
memory,  all  the  sweet  mellowing  of  outline  and 
detail,  may  be  dismantled  or  restored;  yet  the 
beauty  is  not  in  the  passing  form,  but  in  the 
spirit  that  expresses  itself  in  the  form  on  the  one 
hand — the  great,  subtle,  tender,  powerful  spirit 
that  is  for  ever  working  and  creating  and 
producing — and,  on  the  other  hand,  it  lies  no 
less  in  the  desire  and  worship  that  thrills  and 
beats,  deep  in  the  spirit,  leaning  out  like  one 
who  gazes  upon  the  sunset  from  the  window  of  a 
tower,  listening  to  the  appeal  of  beauty,  looking 
out  for  it,  welcoming  it,  thirsting  for  it.  Both 
these  powers  are  there,  the  spirit  that  calls 
and  the  spirit  that  answers  the  call.  The  mis- 
take we  make  is  to  anchor  ourselves  timidly 
and  persistently  to  one  set  of  beautiful  forms, 


The  Symbol  123 

and  if  they  are  destroyed,  to  feel  that  the  world 
is  made  desolate  for  us.  We  are  apt  to  think 
that  there  is  a  sort  of  loyalty  about  this,  and  that 
an  ineffectual  repining  for  the  beautiful  thing 
that  has  passed  proves  the  intensity  of  our 
regard  and  love.  It  is  not  so;  we  might  as 
well  repine  if  we  have  loved  a  child,  to  find  it 
growing  up  to  strength  and  manhood.  Be- 
cause we  have  loved  the  rosebud,  we  need  not 
despise  the  rose,  and  when  the  child  loses  its 
tender  charm,  when  the  rose  drops  her  loosened 
petals  on  the  grass,  our  love  is  a  mere  sentiment, 
an  aesthetic  appreciation,  if  we  can  only  regret 
what  is  past.  It  is  the  fragrant  charm,  the 
echoing  harmony  of  the  spirit  that  matters; 
and  if  the  charm  passes  out  of  our  ken,  if  the 
song  dies  upon  the  air,  if  the  sunset  hue  fades, 
it  is  all  there  none  the  less,  both  the  beauty  and 
the  love  we  bore  it.  I  do  not  mean  that  the 
conquest  is  an  easy  one,  because  our  perceptions 
are  so  narrow  and  so  finite  that  when  the  sweet 
sound  or  the  delicate  light  passes  out  of  our 
horizon,  it  is  hard  to  feel  that  it  is  not  dead. 
But  we  ought,  I  am  sure,  to  remind  ourselves 
more  constantly  that  both  the  quality  of  beauty 
itself  and  the  desirous  love  that  it  evokes  are  the 
unchangeable  things ;  and  that  though  they  shift 
and  fuse,  ebb  and  flow,  they  are  assuredly  there. 
"When  they  persecute  you  in  one  city,  flee  into 
another,"  said  the  Saviour  of  men  in  a  dim 


124  The  Silent  Isle 

allegory.  It  is  true  of  all  things;  and  the  secret 
is  to  realise  that  we  have  no  continuing  city. 
Of  course  there  sometimes  fall  shattering  blows 
upon  us,  when  some  one  who  was  half  the  world 
to  us,  on  whom  we  have  leant  and  depended, 
whose  mind  and  heart  have  cast  a  glow  of  hope 
and  comfort  upon  every  detail  of  life,  steps  past 
the  veil  into  the  unseen.  Then  comes  the  dark- 
est hour  of  struggling  bewilderment;  but  even 
then  wo  make  a  miserable  mistake,  if  we  with- 
draw into  the  silence  of  our  own  hearts  and 
refuse  to  be  comforted,  priding  ourselves,  it  may 
be,  upon  the  abiding  faithfulness  of  our  love. 
But  to  yield  to  that  is  treachery;  and  then, 
most  of  all,  we  ought  to  stretch  out  our  hands  to 
all  about  us  and  welcome  every  gift  of  love.  It 
is  impossible  not  to  suffer,  yet  we  are  perhaps 
but  tenderly  punished  for  having  loved  the 
image  better  than  the  thing  it  signified.  We  are 
punished  because  our  idolising  love  has  rested 
content  with  the  form  that  it  has  borne,  and 
has  not  gone  further  and  deeper  into  the  love 
which  it  typified. 

What  we  have  to  beware  of  is  a  timid  and 
cautious  loitering  in  the  little  experience  we  have 
ourselves  selected,  in  the  little  garden  we  have 
fenced  off  from  the  plain  and  the  wood.  And 
thus  the  old  house  that  I  loved  in  my  pleasant 
youth,  the  good  days  that  I  spent  there  year  by 
year,  are  an  earnest  of  the  tender  care  that  sur- 


The  Symphony  of  Life        125 

rounds  me.  I  will  not  regard  them  as  past  and 
gone;  I  will  rather  regard  them  as  the  slow 
sweet  prelude  of  the  great  symphony;  if  I  am 
now  tossed  upon  the  melancholy  and  broken 
waves  of  some  vehement  scherzo  of  life,  the 
subject  is  but  working  itself  out,  and  I  will 
strive  to  apprehend  it  even  here.  There  are 
other  movements  that  await  me,  as  wonderful, 
as  sweet. 

"And  now  that  it  is  all  over,"  said  an  old, 
wearied,  and  dying  statesman,  after  a  day  of 
sad  farewells,  "it  is  not  so  bad  after  all."  The 
terror,  the  disquietude,  is  not  in  the  thing 
suffered,  but  in  our  own  faithless  hearts.  But 
if  we  look  back  at  the  past  and  see  how  portion 
after  portion  has  become  dear  and  beautiful, 
can  we  not  look  forward  with  a  more  steadfast 
tranquillity  and  believe  that  the  love  and  beauty 
are  all  there  waiting  for  us,  though  the  old 
light  seems  to  have  been  withdrawn? 


XVII 

What  a  strange,  illusory  power  memory  has 
in  dealing  with  the  past,  of  creating  a  scene  and 
an  emotion  that  not  only  never  existed,  but  that 
could  not  possibly  ever  have  existed.  When  I 
look  back  to  my  own  commonplace,  ordinary, 
straightforward  boyhood,  wrapped  up  in  tiny 
ambitions,  vexed  with  trivial  cares,  full  of  trifling 
events,  with  a  constant  sense  of  small  dissatis- 
faction, I  am  amazed  at  the  colours  with  which 
memory  tints  the  scene.  She  selects  a  few 
golden  hours,  scenes  of  peculiar  and  instanta- 
neous radiance,  when  the  old  towers  and  trees 
were  touched  with  a  fine  sunshine,  when  the 
sky  was  unclouded,  the  heart  light,  and  when 
one  lived  for  a  moment  in  a  sense  of  some 
romance  of  ambition  or  friendship ;  and  she  bids 
one  believe  that  all  one's  boyhood  was  thus 
bright  and  goodly,  although  one  knows  in  one's 
heart  that  the  texture  of  it  was  often  mean, 
pitiful,  and  selfish;  though  reason  at  the  same 
time  overwhelms  one  with  reproach  and  shame 
for  not  having  made  a  brighter  and  braver  thing 
of  it,  when  all  the  conditions  were  so  favourable. 

126 


Pathos  and  Bathos  127 

It  is  so  too  with  pathos — that  pathos  which 
centres  so  firmly  upon  the  smallest  details,  and 
neglects  the  larger  sadnesses.  I  had  so  curious 
an  instance  of  this  the  other  day  that  I  cannot 
refrain  from  telling  it,  because  I  suppose  it  can 
hardly  ever  have  happened  to  any  one  before. 

I  have  an  old  friend  who  lives  by  himself 
in  London,  where  I  sometimes  visit  him.  He 
is  a  studious,  unmethodical,  untidy  man.  His 
rooms  are  dusty  and  neglected,  and  he  is  quite 
unaware  of  his  surroundings.  By  his  favourite 
arm-chair  stands  a  table  covered  with  papers, 
books,  cigar-boxes,  paper-knives,  pencils,  in 
horrible  confusion;  a  condition  of  things  which 
causes  him  great  discomfort  and  frequent  loss 
of  time.  I  have  often  exhorted  him  to  sort  the 
mess ;  he  has  always  smilingly  undertaken  to  do 
so,  but  has  never  succeeded. 

A  few  weeks  ago  I  called  to  see  him;  the 
servant  who  let  me  in,  whose  face  was  new  to  me, 
looked  very  grave ;  and  when  I  asked  if  my  friend 
was  in,  turned  pale  and  said:  "I  suppose  you 

do  not  know  what  has  happened,  sir — Mr.  A 

died  yesterday  at  Brighton.     I  think  that  Mr. 

B "  (naming  the  owner  of  the  house,  who 

lets  lodgings)  "can  tell  you  all  about  it — will 
you  go  upstairs?  I  will  tell  him  you  are 
here." 

I  went  up:  the  sun  was  streaming  into  the 
room,  with  its  well-known   furniture  and  pic- 


128  The  Silent  Isle 

tures,  shabby  and  yet  somehow  home-like. 
There  was  the  familiar  table,  with  all  its  litter. 
I  was  stunned  with  the  news,  unable  to  realise 
it;  and  the  sight  of  the  table,  with  all  the  cus- 
tomary details  in  the  old  disorder,  fairly  un- 
manned me;  so  it  was  all  over  and  done  with, 
and  my  friend  was  gone  without  a  word  or  sign. 

I  heard  rapid  steps  along  the  passage;  Mr. 

B ,  the  owner  of  the  house,  entered  with  an 

apologetic  smile.     "I  am  afraid  that  there  has 

been  a  mistake,  sir,"  he  said.     "Mr.  A is 

not  dead,  as  the  servant  informed  you;  it  is  the 
gentleman  who  lives  on  the  floor  above,  who 
has  been  an  invalid  for  some  time,  who  is  dead; 
the  servant  is  new  to  the  place,  and  has  made  a 
confusion;  we  only  had  a  wire  a  few  minutes 

ago.     Mr.  A is  perfectly  well,  and  will  be 

in  in  a  few  minutes  if  you  will  wait." 

I  waited,  in  a  strange  revulsion  of  spirit;  but 
the  most  singular  thing  is  that  the  crowded 
table,  which  had  been  a  few  minutes  before 
the  most  pathetic  thing  in  the  world,  had  be- 
come by  the  time  that  A entered  smiling, 

as  irritating  and  annoying  as  ever ;  changed  from 
the  poor  table  where  his  earthly  litter  had 
accumulated,  which  he  could  touch  no  more  for 
ever,  into  the  table  which  he  ought  to  have  put 
straight  long  ago  and  should  be  ashamed  of 
leaving  in  so  vile  a  condition. 


XVIII 

I  have  had  a  night  of  strange  and  terror- 
haunted  dreams.  Yesterday  I  was  forced  to 
work  at  full  speed,  feverishly  and  furiously  for 
a  great  many  hours,  at  a  piece  of  work  that 
admitted  of  no  delay.  By  the  evening  I  was 
considerably  exhausted,  yet  the  work  was  not 
done.  I  slept  for  an  hour,  and  then  settled 
down  again  and  worked  very  late  in  the  night, 
until  it  was  finished.  Such  a  strain  cannot  be 
borne  with  impunity,  and  I  never  do  such  a 
thing  except  under  pressure  of  absolute  neces- 
sity. I  suppose  that  I  contrived  to  inflame  some 
delicate  tissue  of  the  brain,  as  the  result  was  a 
series  of  intensely  vivid  dreams,  with  a  strange 
quality  of  horror  about  them.  It  was  not  so 
much  that  the  incidents  themselves  were  of  a 
dreadful  type,  but  I  was  overshadowed  by  a 
deep  boding,  a  dull  ache  of  the  mind,  which 
charged  everything  that  I  saw  with  a  sense  of 
fortuitous  dismay.  I  woke  in  that  painful 
mood  in  which  the  mind  is  filled  with  a  formless 
dread;  and  the  sensation  has  hung  about  me, 
more  or  less,  all  day. 

9  129 


130  The  Silent  Isle 

What  a  strange  phenomenon  it  is  that  the 
sick  mind  should  be  able  thus  to  paint  its  dis- 
eased fancies  in  the  dark,  and  then  to  be  dis- 
mayed at  its  own  creations.  In  one  of  my 
dreams,  for  instance  I  seemed  to  wander  in  the 
bare  and  silent  corridors  of  a  great  house.  I 
passed  a  small  and  sinister  door,  and  was  im- 
pelled to  open  it.  I  found  myself  in  a  large 
oak-panelled  room,  with  small  barred  windows 
admitting  a  sickly  light.  The  floor  was  paved 
with  stone;  and  in  the  centre,  built  into  the 
pavement,  stood  a  large  block  of  basalt,  black 
and  smooth,  which  was  roughly  carved  into  the 
semblance  of  a  gigantic  human  head.  I  stared 
at  this  for  a  long  time,  and  then  swiftly  with- 
drew, overcome  with  horror  which  I  could  not 
translate  into  words.  All  that  I  seemed  to 
know  was  that  some  kind  of  shocking  rites  were 
here  celebrated:  I  did  not  know  what  they 
were,  and  there  were  no  signs  of  anything;  no 
instruments  of  death,  no  trace  of  slaughter;  yet 
for  all  that  I  knew  that  the  place  stood  for 
some  evil  mystery,  and  the  very  walls  and 
floor  seemed  soaked  with  fear  and  pain. 

That  is  the  inexplicable  part  of  dreams,  that 
one  should  invent  incidents  and  scenes  of  every 
kind,  with  no  sense  of  invention  or  creation, 
with  no  feeling  that  one  is  able  to  control  what 
one  appears  to  hear  or  see;  and  then  that  in 
some  other  part  of  one's  mind,  one  should  be 


Dreams  131 

moved  and  stirred  by  the  appropriate  emotions 
awakened  by  word  or  sight.  In  waking  hours 
one  can  be  stirred,  amused,  grieved  by  the  exer- 
cise of  one's  imagination,  but  one  is  aware 
that  it  is  imagination,  and  one  does  not  lose  the 
sense  of  responsibility,  the  consciousness  of 
creation. 

It  is  this  sensation,  that  dreams  arise  from 
some  power  or  influence  exterior  to  oneself, 
which  gives  them  the  significance  which  they 
used  to  possess,  and  indeed  still  possess,  for  the 
unreasoning  mind.  They  seem  communica- 
tions from  some  other  sphere  of  life,  experi- 
ences external  to  oneself,  messages  from  some 
hidden  agency.  When  they  correspond,  as  by 
coincidence  they  are  almost  bound  on  occasions 
to  do,  with  some  unforeseen  and  unexpected 
event  that  follows  them,  it  is  very  difficult  for 
unphilosophical  minds  not  to  believe  that  they 
are  visions  sent  from  some  power  that  can  fore- 
see the  future.  It  would  be  strange  if  dreams, 
trafficking  as  they  do  with  such  wide  and  various 
experiences,  did  not  occasionally  seem  to  be 
related  to  events  of  the  following  day,  however 
little  anticipated  those  events  may  be;  but  no 
theory  of  dreams  would  be  satisfactory  or 
scientific  which  did  not  take  account  of  the 
vast  number  of  occasions  on  which  they  do  not 
in  the  least  correspond  with  what  followed  in 
the  day.     The  natural  temper  of  man  is  so  pre- 


132  The  Silent  Isle 

eminently  unscientific  that  a  single  occasion  on 
which  a  dream  does  seem  to  correspond  in  a 
curious  manner  with  subsequent  events  out- 
weighs a  thousand  occasions  on  which  no  such 
correspondence  is  traceable.  Yet  nothing  but 
a  long  series  of  premonitory  dreams  could  suf- 
fice for  the  basis  of  a  scientific  theory. 

The  main  interest  of  dreams  to  myself  is 
that  they  serve  to  show  the  essential  texture  of 
the  mind.  In  waking  hours  I  am  conscious  of 
many  natural  phenomena  which  make  a  strong 
impression  on  my  mind;  but  my  dreaming  mind 
makes,  it  seems  a  whimsical  selection  among 
these  incidents,  and  discards  some,  while  it 
makes  a  liberal  use  of  others.  For  instance,  in 
real  life,  the  sight  of  a  beautiful  sunset  is  a  com- 
mon experience,  and  stirs  in  me  the  most  pro- 
found emotion ;  yet  I  have  never  seen  a  sunset  in 
dreams.  All  my  dreams  are  enacted  in  a  pale 
and  clear  light  of  which  the  source  is  never 
visible.  I  have  never  seen  sun,  moon,  or  star  in 
a  dream.  Again,  to  step  into  a  farther  region, 
I  am  a  good  deal  occupied  in  real  life  by  ethical 
considerations;  but  in  dreams  I  have  absolutely 
no  sense  of  morality.  I  am  afraid,  in  my  dreams, 
of  the  consequences  of  my  acts;  but  I  commit 
a  murder  or  a  theft  in  a  dream  without  the  least 
scruple  of  conscience. 

Whether  this  proves  that  my  morality,  my 
conscience,  in  real  life,  is  a  purely  conventional 


Dreams  133 

thing,  acquired  by  habit,  I  do  not  know;  it 
would  appear  to  be  so.  Again,  some  of  my  most 
habitual  actions  in  real  life  are  never  repeated 
in  dreams ;  I  have  for  many  years  devoted  much 
time  and  energy  to  literary  work  in  real  life, 
but  in  dreams  I  have  never  written  anything; 
though  I  have  heard  poems  repeated  or  read 
from  books  which  are  purely  imaginary,  and  I 
have  even  read  my  own  compositions  aloud 
from  what  appeared  in  dreams  to  be  a  pre- 
viously written  manuscript ;  but  I  am  never  con- 
scious, in  dreams,  of  ever  having  put  pen  to 
paper  for  any  purpose  whatever,  even  to  write 
a  letter.  Yet,  again,  it  is  not  as  though  all  the 
materials  were  drawn  from  a  time  before  I  had 
begun  to  write;  because  sometimes  dreams  will 
repeat,  or  interweave  into  their  texture,  quite 
recent  experiences. 

It  appears  to  me  as  though  the  only  part  of 
the  brain  that  is  active  in  dreams  is  the  specta- 
torial  and  dramatic  part ;  and  even  so  it  is  quite 
beyond  me  to  solve  the  problem  of  how  it  comes 
about  that  my  visualising  faculty  in  dreams  can 
bring  upon  the  stage,  as  it  often  does,  some  per- 
sonage who  is  perfectly  well  known  to  me  in 
real  life,  and  cause  him  to  behave  in  so  unac- 
countable and  grotesque  a  fashion  that  I  appear 
to  be  entirely  bewildered  and  even  shocked  by 
the  occurrence.  For  instance,  I  dreamt  the 
other  night  that  I  went  to  see  a  high  ecclesiasti  ■ 


134  The  Silent  Isle 

cal  dignitary,  whom  I  have  known  for  many- 
years,  whom  I  knew  in  my  dream  to  have  been 
undergoing  a  rest-cure,  though  the  person  in 
question  has  never  to  my  knowledge  under- 
gone any  such  experience.  I  was  greatly 
surprised  and  even  distressed  when  he  entered 
the  room  arrayed  in  a  short  jacket,  with  an 
Eton  collar,  carrying  some  childish  toys,  and 
saying,  "I  am  completely  rejuvenated."  I  was 
not  in  the  least  amused  by  this  at  the  time,  but 
only  lost  in  wonder  as  to  how  I  could  com- 
municate to  him  that  it  would  be  a  great  mis- 
fortune if  he  went  back  to  his  dignified  post  in 
such  a  guise  and  with  such  avocations  as  his  toys 
implied. 

The  whole  thing  is  an  insoluble  mystery.  I 
often  wish  that  some  scientific  person  would 
investigate  the  matter  in  a  strictly  rational 
spirit;  though  it  is  certainly  difficult  to  see  in 
what  directions  such  investigations  could  be 
fruitful.  Still  it  seems  to  me  strange  and 
unsatisfactory  that  so  little  should  be  known 
about  the  origin  and  nature  of  so  universal  a 
phenomenon. 

I  have  had  sometimes  dreams  of  a  solemnity 
and  beauty  that  appear  to  transcend  my  powers 
of  imagination.  I  have  seen  landscapes  in 
dreams  of  a  kind  that  I  have  never  seen  in  real 
life;  I  have  held  long,  intimate,  and  tender  con- 
versations with  persons  long  since  dead,  which 


Dreams  135 

I  might,  if  I  were  inclined,  consider  to  be  real 
contact  with  disembodied  spirits,  did  I  not 
also  sometimes  hold  trivial,  absurd,  and  even 
painful  intercourse,  of  an  entirely  uncharacter- 
istic kind,  with  the  same  people,  intercourse 
which  all  sense  of  affection  and  reverence 
would  lead  me  unhesitatingly  to  regard  as 
purely  imaginary.  The  strangest  thing  in  such 
dreams  is  that  the  memory  is  wholly  at  fault, 
because,  though  one  is  not  conscious  that  the 
people  have  died  long  ago,  the  mind  is  apt  to 
wrestle  with  the  wonder  as  to  why  one  has  seen 
so  little  of  them  of  recent  years.  The  memory 
seems  to  be  perfectly  aware  that  one  has  not  seen 
much  of  them  of  late,  but  the  effort  to  recall  the 
fact  that  they  are  dead,  even  when  their  deaths 
have  been  some  of  the  most  vivid  and  grievous 
experiences  of  one's  life,  seems  to  be  quite 
beyond  its  power. 

One  of  the  most  curious  facts  of  all  is  this.  I 
sometimes  have  had  extremely  affectionate  and 
confidential  interviews  in  dreams  with  people 
whom  I  have  not  known  well — so  vivid,  indeed, 
that  the  dream  interview  has  proved  a  real 
step  in  a  friendship,  because  when,  as  has  more 
than  once  occurred,  I  have  met  the  same  people 
in  real  life  while  the  dream  is  still  fresh  in  my 
mind,  I  have  met  them  with  a  sense  of  confiden- 
tial relations  that  has  made  it  easier  for  me 
to  advance  in  intimacy  and  to  take  a  certain 


136  The  Silent  Isle 

sympathy  for  granted.  I  have  one  particular 
friend  in  mind  whose  friendship  I  can  honestly 
say  I  gained  in  a  dream. 

On  the  other  hand,  I  have  occasionally  had 
in  a  dream  so  painful  and  unsatisfactory  an 
interview  with  a  friend,  rousing  in  my  mind 
such  anger  and  resentment,  that  it  has  proved 
a  cloud  over  my  acquaintance.  It  is  not  that 
on  awaking  I  believe  in  the  reality  of  the  ex- 
perience; but  it  seems  to  have  given  a  real 
shock  to  a  delicate  sympathy,  so  that  there  has 
been  an  actual  difficulty  on  meeting  the  friend 
upon  the  same  terms  as  formerly,  even  though 
one  may  relate  the  dream  incident  and  laugh 
over  it  with  him. 

These  are  indubitably  very  mysterious  ex- 
periences; and  I  cannot  say  that  I  think  that 
they  are  explicable  upon  any  ordinary  hypothe- 
sis; that  one  should  thus  create  a  sense  of 
sympathy  or  misunderstanding  by  the  exercise 
of  involuntary  imagination  which  should  have  a 
real  power  to  affect  one's  relations  with  a  per- 
son— here  I  feel  myself  on  the  threshold  of  a 
very  deep  mystery  indeed. 


XIX 

It  is  generally  taken  for  granted  nowadays 
by  fervent  educationalists  that  the  important 
thing  to  encourage  in  boys  is  keenness  in  every 
department  of  school  life.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
the  keenness  which  is  as  a  rule  most  developed 
in  the  public  school  product  is  keenness  about 
athletic  exercises.  In  the  intellectual  region,  a 
boy  is  encouraged  to  do  his  duty,  but  there  is 
no  question  that  a  boy  who  manifested  an 
intense  enthusiasm  for  his  school  work,  who 
talked,  thought,  dreamed  of  nothing  but  suc- 
cess in  examinations,  would  be  considered 
rather  abnormal  and  eccentric  both  by  his  in- 
structors and  his  schoolfellows,  though  he 
would  not  be  thought  singular  by  any  one  if 
he  did  the  same  about  his  athletic  prospects. 
What  one  cannot  help  wondering  is  whether 
this  kind  of  enthusiasm  is  valuable  to  the 
character  under  its  influence,  whatever  the 
subject  of  that  enthusiasm  may  be.  The  nor- 
mal boy,  who  is  enthusiastic  about  athletics, 
tends  to  be  cynical  about  intellectual  success; 
and  indeed  even  eminent  men  are  not  ashamed 

137 


138  The  Silent  Isle 

to  encourage  this  by  uttering,  as  a  Lord  Chan- 
cellor lately  did,  good-humoured  gibes  about  the 
futility  of  dons  and  schoolmasters,  and  the 
uselessness  of  lectures.  The  other  day  a 
young  friend  of  mine  indulged  in  a  glowing 
description,  in  my  presence,  of  the  methods  and 
form  of  a  certain  short-distance  runner.  It  was 
a  generous  panegyric,  full  of  ingenuous  admira- 
tion. He  spoke  of  the  runner's  devices — I  fear 
I  cannot  reproduce  the  technical  terms — with 
the  same  thrilled  and  awestruck  emotion  which 
Shelley  might  have  used,  as  an  undergraduate, 
in  speaking  of  Homer  or  Shakespeare.  I 
suppose  it  is  a  desirable  thing,  on  the  whole, 
to  be  able  to  run  faster  than  other  people, 
though  the  practical  utility  of  being  able  to  do 
a  hundred  yards  in  a  fraction  of  a  second  less 
than  other  runners  is  not  easily  demonstrable. 
But  for  all  that  I  cannot  help  wondering  whether 
such  enthusiasm  is  not  thrown  away  or  misap- 
plied. Perhaps  the  same  indictment  might  be 
made  against  all  warmly  expressed  admiration 
for  human  performances.  The  greatest  philo- 
sopher or  poet  in  the  world  is,  after  all,  a  very 
limited  being.  The  knowledge  possessed  by  the 
wisest  man  of  science  is  a  very  minute  affair 
when  compared  with  what  there  remains  in  the 
universe  to  know;  the  finest  picture  ever 
painted  compares  very  unfavourably  with  the 
beauty    that    surrounds    us    every    minute    of 


Admiration  139 

every  day.  The  question,  to  my  mind,  is 
whether  we  do  not  do  ourselves  harm  in  the 
long-run  by  losing  ourselves  in  frantic  admira- 
tion for  any  human  performance.  The  Psalmist 
expressed  this  feeling  very  cogently  and  humor- 
ously when  he  said  that  the  Creator  did  not 
delight  in  any  man's  legs.  The  question  is  not 
whether  it  is  not  a  natural  temptation  to  limit 
our  dreams  of  ultimate  possibilities  by  the 
standard  of  human  effort,  but  whether  we  ought 
to  try  and  resist  that  temptation.  When  I 
was  at  a  private  school,  I  heard  a  boy  express 
the  most  fervent  and  unfeigned  admiration  for 
our  head-master,  because  he  caned  culprits  so 
hard,  and  I  suppose  that  one  of  the  germs  of 
religious  feeling  is  the  admiration  of  the  Creator 
because  the  forces  of  nature  make  such  havoc 
of  human  precautions.  Perhaps  it  is  a  neces- 
sary stage  through  which  we  all  must  pass,  the 
stage  of  admiring  something  that  is  just  a  little 
stronger  and  more  effective  than  ourselves. 
Our  admiration  is  based  upon  the  fact  that  such 
strength  and  effectiveness  is  not  wholly  out- 
side our  own  powers  of  attainment,  but  that 
we  can  hope  that  under  favourable  circum- 
stances we  may  acquire  equal  or  similar  ener- 
gies. But  even  if  it  is  a  necessary  stage  of 
progress,  I  am  quite  sure  that  it  ought  not  to  be 
an  ultimate  stage,  and  that  a  man  ought  not 
to  spend  the  whole  of  his  life  admiring  limited 


140  The  Silent  Isle 

human  performances,  however  august  they 
may  be.  That  is  the  great  and  essential  force 
of  religion  in  human  lives,  that  it  tends  to  set 
a  higher  standard,  and  to  concentrate  admira- 
tion upon  Divine  rather  than  upon  human 
forces.  Even  when  we  are  dealing  with  emo- 
tions, the  same  holds  good.  The  writer  of 
romances  who  lavishes  the  whole  force  of  his 
enthusiasm  upon  the  possibilities  of  human 
love,  its  depth,  its  loyalty,  its  faithfulness,  is 
apt  to  lose  the  sense  of  proportion.  One  ought 
to  employ  one's  sense  of  admiration  for  the 
august  achievements  of  humanity  as  a  species 
of  symbolism.  Our  admiration  for  athletic 
prowess,  for  art,  for  literature,  ought  not  to 
limit  itself  to  these,  but  ought  to  regard  them 
as  symbols  of  vaster,  larger,  more  beautiful 
truths. 

The  difficulty  is  to  know  at  what  point  to 
draw  the  line.  These  limited  enthusiasms  may 
have  an  educative  effect  upon  the  persons  who 
indulge  them,  but  they  may  also  have  a  stunt- 
ing effect  if  they  are  pursued  too  long.  A  boy 
passes  my  window  whistling  shrill  a  stave  of  a 
popular  song.  He  is  obviously  delighted  with 
and  intent  upon  his  performance,  and  he  is  ex- 
periencing, no  doubt,  the  artistic  joy  of  creation; 
but  if  that  boy  goes  on  in  life,  as  many  artists 
do,  limiting  his  musical  aspirations  to  the  best 
whistle  that  he  can  himself  emit,  his  ideal  will 


Emulation  141 

be  a  low  one,  however  faithfully  pursued.  The 
ugly  part  of  thus  limiting  our  aspirations  is  that 
such  petty  enthusiasm  is  generally  accompanied 
by  an  intense  craving  for  the  admiration  of 
other  people,  and  it  is  this  which  vitiates  and 
poisons  our  own  admirations.  We  do  not  merely 
think  how  fine  a  performance  it  is ;  we  think  how 
much  we  should  like  to  impress  and  astonish 
other  people,  to  arouse  their  envy  and  jealousy 
by  a  similar  performance.  The  point  is  rather 
that  we  should  enjoy  effort,  and  that  our  aim 
should  be  rather  to  improve  our  own  perform- 
ances than  to  surpass  the  performances  of 
others.  The  right  spirit  is  that  which  Mat- 
thew Arnold  displays  in  one  of  his  letters.  He 
was  writing  at  a  time  when  his  own  literary 
fame  was  securely  established,  yet  he  said  that 
the  longer  he  lived  the  more  grateful  he  was  for 
his  own  success.  He  added  that  the  more 
people  he  came  to  know,  the  more  strongly  he 
felt  the  comparative  equality  of  human  endow- 
ments, and  the  more  clearly  he  perceived  that 
the  successful  writer  found  rather  than  invented 
the  telling  phrase,  the  stimulating  thought. 
That  is  a  very  rare  attitude  of  mind,  and  it  is  as 
noble  as  it  is  rare.  The  successful  writer,  as  a 
rule,  instead  of  being  grateful  for  his  good  for- 
tune in  perceiving  what  others  have  not  per- 
ceived, takes  the  credit  to  himself  for  having 
originated  it,  whereas  he  ought  rather  to  con- 


142  The  Silent  Isle 

ceive  of  himself  as  one  of  a  company  of  miners, 
and  be  thankful  for  having  lighted  upon  a 
richer  pocket  of  auriferous  soil  than  the  rest. 

Of  course  it  sounds  what  is  commonly  called 
priggish  when  a  man,  in  the  style  of  Mr.  Barlow, 
is  always  imploring  the  boy  who  wins  a  race  or 
gets  a  prize  to  turn  his  thoughts  higher  and  to 
take  no  credit  to  himself  for  what  is  only  a 
piece  of  good  fortune,  and  is  not  so  great  a 
performance  after  all.  It  is  easy  to  say  that  this 
is  but  a  pietistic  quenching  of  natural  and  youth- 
ful delight;  but  much  depends  upon  the  way 
in  which  it  is  done,  and  it  is  probably  the  right 
line  to  take,  though  it  is  supposed  to  be  merely 
the  old-fashioned  parental  attitude  of  little 
goody  books.  The  really  modest  and  in- 
genuous boy  does  it  for  himself,  and  the  boy 
who  "puts  on  side"  because  of  his  triumphs  is 
universally  disapproved  of.  Moreover,  as  a 
rule,  in  the  larger  world,  the  greatest  men  are 
really  apt  to  be  among  the  most  modest;  and  it  is 
generally  only  the  second-rate  people  who  try 
to  extort  deference  and  admiration. 

False  enthusiasm  is  probably  only  one  degree 
better  than  cynicism.  Cynicism  is  generally 
the  refuge  of  the  disappointed  and  indolent,  but 
there  is,  after  all,  a  nobler  kind  of  cynicism, 
which  even  religion  must  strive  to  develop,  the 
cynicism  which  realises  the  essential  worthless- 
ness  and  pettiness  of  human  endeavour.     The 


The  Spirit  of  a  Performance   143 

cynicism  that  stops  short  at  this  point  is  the  evil 
kind  of  cynicism,  and  becomes  purely  contemp- 
tuous and  derisive.  But  there  is  a  fruitful 
kind  of  cynicism,  which  faithfully  contrasts  the 
aspirations  and  possibilities  of  humanity  with 
its  actual  performances  and  its  failures,  which 
makes  the  poet  and  the  philosopher  humble  in 
the  presence  of  infinite  beauty  and  infinite 
knowledge. 

It  is  the  quality,  the  spirit,  of  a  performance 
that  matters.  If  a  performance  is  the  best  of 
which  a  man  is  capable,  and  better  than  what  he 
has  hitherto  done,  he  has  achieved  all  that  is 
possible.  If  he  begins  to  reflect  that  it  is  better 
than  what  others  have  done,  then  his  satisfaction 
is  purely  poisonous.  But  to  estimate  human 
possibilities  high  and  human  performances  low, 
and  to  class  one's  own  performances  with  the 
latter  rather  than  the  former,  this  is  temperate 
and  manly  and  strong. 


XX 

There  is  a  picture  of  Rossetti's,  very  badly- 
painted,  I  think,  from  the  technical  point  of 
view,  of  Lucrezia  Borgia.  There  are  apologists 
who  say  that  the  wickedness  of  the  Borgia 
family  is  grossly  exaggerated,  and  that  they 
were  in  reality  very  harmless  and  respectable 
people.  But  Rossetti  thought  of  them,  in 
painting  this  picture,  as  people  stained  with  in- 
famous and  unspeakable  crime,  and  he  has 
contrived  to  invest  the  scene  with  a  horror  of 
darkness.  Lucrezia  sits  in  what  is  meant  to  be 
an  attitude  of  stately  beauty,  and  the  figure  con- 
trives somehow  to  symbolise  that;  though  she 
appears  to  be  both  stout  and  even  blowzy  in 
appearance.  Her  evil  father,  the  Pope  Alex- 
ander, sits  leering  beside  her,  while  her  brother 
Cassar  leans  over  her  and  blows  rose-leaves 
from  her  hair.  There  certainly  hangs  a  hideous 
suggestiveness  of  evil  over  the  group.  In  the 
foreground,  a  page  of  ten  or  twelve  is  dancing, 
together  with  a  little  girl  of  perhaps  nine  or 
ten.  The  page  is  slim  and  delicate,  and  watches 
his  small  companion  with  a  tender  and  brotherly 

144 


The  Sense  of  Sin  145 

sort  of  air ;  both  children  are  entirely  absorbed  in 
their  performance,  which  they  seem  to  have 
been  bidden  to  enact  for  the  pleasure  of  the  three 
watchers.  The  children  look  innocent  enough, 
though  they  too  are  rather  dimly  and  clumsily 
painted;  but  one  feels  that  they  are  somehow 
in  the  net,  that  they  are  growing  up  in  a  pesti- 
lential and  corrupting  atmosphere,  and  that  the 
flowers  of  evil  will  soon  burst  into  premature 
bloom  in  their  tender  souls.  The  whole  scene 
is  overhung  with  a  close  and  enervating  gloom; 
one  apprehends  somehow  that  the  air  swims 
with  a  heavy  fragrance;  and  though  one  feels 
that  the  artist's  hand  failed  to  represent  his 
thought,  he  was  painting  with  a  desperate  in- 
tentness,  and  the  dark  quality  of  the  conception 
contrives  to  struggle  out.  The  art  of  it  is  great 
rather  than  good;  it  is  the  art  of  a  man  who 
realises  the  scene  with  a  terrible  insight,  and  in 
spite  of  a  clumsy  and  smudgy  handling,  manages 
to  bring  it  home  perhaps  even  more  impres- 
sively than  if  he  had  been  fully  master  of  his 
medium.  There  is  a  mingling  of  horror  and 
pathos  over  it  all,  and  the  pretty,  innocent 
gaiety  of  the  children  seems  obscured  as  by 
a  gathering  thunder-cloud;  as  when  the  air 
grows  close  and  still  over  some  scene  of  rustic 
merriment,  and  the  blitheness  of  the  revellers 
sinks  into  torpor  and  faintness,  not  knowing 
what  ails  them.  One  feels  that  the  performers 
10 


146  The  Silent  Isle 

of  the  dance  will  be  rewarded  with  kisses  and 
sweetmeats,  and  that  they  will  draw  the  poison 
into  their  souls. 

It  is  surely  very  difficult  to  analyse  what 
this  shadow  of  sin  upon  the  world  may  be, 
because  there  is  so  large  an  element  of  sub- 
jectivity mingled  with  it.  So  much  of  it 
seems  to  depend  upon  the  temper  and  beliefs 
of  the  time,  so  much  of  the  shadow  of  con- 
science to  be  the  fear  of  social  and  even  legal 
penalty.  Not  to  travel  far  for  instances,  one 
finds  Plato  speaking  in  a  guileless  and  romantic 
fashion  of  a  whole  range  of  passions  and  emo- 
tions that  we  have  grown  to  consider  as  in- 
herently degrading  and  repulsive.  Yet  no 
shadow  of  the  sense  of  sin  seems  to  have  brooded 
over  that  bright  and  clear  Greek  life,  the  ele- 
ments of  which,  except  in  the  regions  which 
our  morality  condemns,  seem  so  intensely 
desirable  and  ennobling.  In  ages,  too,  when 
life  was  more  precarious,  and  men  were  so  much 
less  sensitive  to  the  idea  of  human  suffering, 
one  finds  a  light-hearted  cruelty  practised 
which  is  insupportable  to  modern  ideals.  Those 
wars  of  extermination  among  the  Israelites, 
when  man  and  woman,  boy  and  girl,  were 
ruthlessly  and  sternly  slain,  because  they  were 
held  to  belong  to  some  tribe  abhorred  by  the 
God  of  Sabaoth;  or  when,  in  their  own  polity, 
some  notorious  sinner  was  put  to  death  with  all 


The  Sense  of  Sin  147 

his  unhappy  family,  however  innocent — no 
shadow  of  conscience  seems  to  have  brooded 
over  those  destroyers:  they  rather  had  the 
inspiriting  and  ennobling  sense  of  having  per- 
formed a  sacred  duty,  and  carried  out  the  com- 
mands of  a  jealous  God.  Viewing  the  matter, 
indeed,  as  dispassionately  and  philosophically 
as  possible,  it  is  hard  to  justify  the  ways  of  a 
Creator  who  slowly  developed  and  matured 
a  race,  keeping  them  deliberately  ignorant  of 
light  and  truth,  in  order  that  they  might  at 
last  be  exterminated,  in  blood  and  pain,  by  a 
dominant  and  righteous  race  of  invaders. 

It  would  seem,  indeed,  as  though  the  sense 
of  sin  did  not  reside  in  the  act  at  all,  but  only 
in  the  sense  that  the  act  is  committed  in  de- 
fiance of  light  and  higher  instinct.  Even  our 
own  morality,  on  which  we  pride  ourselves,  how 
confused  and  topsy-turvy  it  is  in  many  respects ! 
How  monstrous  it  is  that  a  hungry  man  should 
be  punished  legally  for  theft,  while  an  ill- 
tempered  and  unjust  parent  or  schoolmaster 
should  be  allowed,  year  after  year,  to  make  the 
lives  of  the  children  about  them  into  misery  and 
heaviness.  Life  is  full  of  such  examples,  where 
no  agency  whatever  is,  or  can  be,  brought  to  bear 
by  society  upon  a  notorious  wrecker  of  human 
happiness,  so  long  as  he  is  prudent  and  wary. 

It  is  the  slowness  of  it  all  that  is  so  dis- 
heartening;   the    impossibility    that    dogs    the 


148  The  Silent  Isle 

efforts  of  the  high-minded,  the  kind,  the  just,  of 
prevailing  against  tradition  and  prejudice  and 
stupidity;  the  grim  acquiescence  in  sanctioned 
oppression  that  characterises  a  certain  type 
of  respectable  virtue;  the  melancholy  ineffec- 
tiveness of  kindly  persons,  the  lamentable  lack 
of  proportion  that  mars  the  work  of  the  enthu- 
siastic faddist — these  things  tempt  one  at  times, 
in  moments  of  despair  and  dreariness,  to  be- 
lieve that  the  one  lesson  of  life  is  meant  to  be  a 
hopeless  patience,  a  dull  acquiescence  in  deeply- 
rooted  evil.  It  is  bewildering  to  see  a  world  so 
out  of  joint,  and  to  feel  that  the  one  force  that 
has  worked  wonders  is  the  discontent  with 
things  as  they  are.  And  even  so  the  lesson  is 
a  hard  one,  because  it  has  been  the  lot  of  so  few 
of  the  great  conquerors  of  humanity  ever  to  see 
the  hour  of  their  triumph,  which  comes  long 
after  and  late,  when  they  have  breathed  out 
their  ardent  spirit  in  agony  and  despair. 

But,  after  all,  however  much  we  may  philo- 
sophise about  sin  or  attempt  to  analyse  its 
essence,  there  is  some  dark  secret  there,  of 
which  from  time  to  time  we  are  grievously  con- 
scious. Who  does  not  know  the  sense  of  failure 
to  overcome,  of  lapsing  from  a  hope  or  a  pur- 
pose, the  burden  of  the  thought  of  some  coward- 
ice or  unkindness  which  we  cannot  undo  and 
which  we  need  not  have  committed?  No 
resolute  determinism  can  ever  avail  us  against 


Conscience  149 

the  stern  verdict  of  that  inner  tribunal  of  the 
soul,  which  decides,  too,  by  some  instinct  that 
we  cannot  divine,  to  sting  and  torture  us  with 
the  memory  of  deeds,  the  momentousness  and 
importance  of  which  we  should  utterly  fail  to 
explain  to  others.  There  are  things  in  my  own 
past,  which  would  be  met  with  laughter  and 
ridicule  if  I  attempted  to  describe  them,  that 
still  make  me  blush  to  recollect  with  a  sense  of 
guilt  and  shame,  and  seem  indelibly  branded 
upon  the  mind.  There  are  things,  too,  of 
which  I  dc  not  feel  ashamed,  which,  if  I  were  to 
describe  them  to  others,  would  be  received  with 
a  sort  of  incredulous  consternation,  to  think 
that  I  could  have  performed  them.  That  is  the 
strange  part  of  the  inner  conscience,  that  it  seems 
so  wholly  independent  of  tradition  or  convention. 
And  it  is  from  this  sense  of  a  burden,  borne 
without  hope  of  redemption,  that  we  would 
all  of  us  give  our  most  prized  possessions  to  be 
free;  it  is  this  which  has  cast  such  an  awful 
power  into  the  hands  of  the  unscrupulous  people 
who  have  claimed  to  be  able  to  atone  for,  to 
loose,  to  set  free  the  ailing  soul.  Face  to  face 
with  the  terror  of  darkness,  there  is  hardly 
anything  of  which  mankind  will  not  repent ;  and 
I  have  sometimes  thought  that  the  darkest  and 
heaviest  temptation  in  the  whole  world  is  the 
temptation  to  yield  to  a  craven  fear,  when  the 
sincere  conscience  does  not  condemn. 


XXI 

I  listened  the  other  day,  at  a  public  function, 
to  an  eloquent  panegyric,  pronounced  by  a  man 
of  great  ability  and  sympathetic  cultivation, 
on  the  Greek  spirit.  I  fell  for  the  moment 
entirely  under  the  spell  of  his  lofty  rhetoric,  his 
persuasive  and  illuminating  argument.  I  wish 
I  could  reproduce  what  he  said;  but  it  was  like 
a  strain  of  beautiful  music,  and  my  mind  was  so 
much  delighted  by  his  rich  eloquence,  his  subtle 
transitions,  his  deft  modulations,  that  I  had 
neither  time  nor  opportunity  to  commit  what 
he  said  to  memory.  One  thing  he  said  which 
struck  me  very  much,  that  the  Greek  spirit 
resembled  rather  the  modern  scientific  spirit 
than  any  other  of  the  latter-day  developments  of 
thought.  I  think  that  this  is  true  in  a  sense, 
that  the  Greeks  were  penetrated  by  an  in- 
satiable curiosity,  and  desired  to  study  the 
principles  and  arrive  at  the  truth  of  things. 
But  I  do  not,  upon  reflection,  think  that  it  is 
wholly  true,  because  the  modern  spirit  is  greatly 
in  love  with  classification  and  with  detail, 
while  the  Greek  spirit  rather  aimed  at  beauty, 

150 


The  Greek  Spirit  151 

and  investigated  the  causes  of  things  with 
wonder  and  delight,  in  what  may  be  called  the 
romantic,  the  poetical  spirit. 

The  mistake  that  the  orator  seemed  to  me  to 
make  was  that  he  implied,  or  appeared  to 
imply,  that  the  Greek  spirit  could  be  attained 
by  the  study  of  Greek.  My  own  belief  is  that 
the  essence  of  the  Greek  spirit  was  its  originality, 
its  splendid  absence  of  deference,  its  disregard 
of  what  was  traditional.  The  Greeks  owed 
nothing  to  outside  influences.  If  the  dim  ori- 
gins of  their  art  were  Egyptian,  they  strode 
forward  for  themselves,  and  spent  no  time  in 
investigating  the  earlier  traditions.  Again,  in 
literature,  they  wasted  no  force  in  attempting 
to  imbibe  culture  from  outside  influences; 
they  merely  developed  the  capacities  of  their 
own  sonorous  and  graceful  language;  they  in- 
fused it  with  their  own  vivid  and  beautiful 
personality. 

Of  course,  it  may  be  urged  that  there  proba- 
bly did  not  exist  in  the  world  at  that  date 
treasures  of  ancient  literature  and  art.  The 
question  is  what  the  Greeks  would  have  done  if 
they  had  found  themselves  in  a  later  world, 
stocked,  and  even  overstocked,  with  old  master- 
pieces and  monuments  of  human  intellect  and 
energy  and  skill.  The  doubt  is  whether  the 
creative  impulse  would  have  died  away,  and 
whether  the  Greeks  would  have  tended  to  fling 


152  The  Silent  Isle 

themselves  into  the  passionate  study,  the  eager 
apprehension,  of  the  beautiful  inheritance  of  the 
ages.  I  cannot  myself  believe  it.  They  would 
have  had,  I  believe,  an  intense  and  ardent  ap- 
preciation of  what  had  been,  but  the  desire  co 
see  and  hear  some  new  thing  of  which  St.  Paul 
spoke,  the  deep-seated  desire  for  self-expres- 
sion, would  have  kept  them  free  from  any 
tame  surrender  to  tradition,  any  danger  of 
basing  their  cultivation  on  what  had  been  re- 
presented or  thought  or  sung  by  their  human 
predecessors.  I  cannot,  for  instance,  conceive 
of  the  Greeks  as  devoting  themselves  to  erudi- 
tion; I  cannot  imagine  their  giving  themselves 
up  to  the  same  minute  appreciation  of  ancient 
forms  of  expression  which  we  give  to  the  Greek 
literature  itself. 

Moreover,  unless  we  concede  to  the  Greek 
literature  the  position  of  the  high-water  mark 
of  human  expression,  and  believe  that  the  intel- 
lect of  man  has  since  that  day  suffered  decline 
and  eclipse,  we  ought  not  to  allow  an  ancient 
literature  to  overshadow  our  own  energies, 
or  to  give  up  the  hope  of  creating  a  vivid 
literature,  at  once  classical  and  romantic,  of 
our  own. 

And  even  if  we  did  concede  to  Greek  litera- 
ture this  august  supremacy,  I  cannot  believe 
that  our  best  intellect  ought  to  be  practised 
in  the  awestruck  submissiveness  of  mind  that 


The  Modern  Spirit  153 

too  often  results  from  our  classical  education. 
That  is  why  I  admire  the  American  spirit  in 
literature.  The  Americans  seem  to  have  little 
of  the  reverent,  exclusive  attitude  which  we 
value  so  highly.  They  are  preoccupied  in  their 
own  native  inspiration.  They  will  speak,  with- 
out any  sense  of  absurdity,  of  Shakespeare  and 
E.  A.  Poe,  of  Walter  Scott  and  Hawthorne,  as 
comparable  influences.  They  are  like  children, 
entirely  absorbed  in  the  interest  and  delight  of 
intent  creation.  But  though  their  productions 
are  at  present,  with  certain  notable  exceptions, 
lacking  in  vitality  and  quality,  this  spirit  is,  I 
believe,  the  spirit  in  which  new  ideas  and  new 
literatures  are  produced.  I  do  not  desire  to 
see  the  Americans  more  critical  of  the  present 
or  more  deferential  to  the  past.  I  do  not  desire 
to  see  them  turn  with  a  hopeless  wonder  to  the 
study  of  the  great  English  masterpieces.  In- 
deed, I  think  that  our  own  tendency  in  England 
to  reverence,  our  constant  appeal  to  classical 
standards,  is  an  obstacle  to  our  intellectual  and 
artistic  progress.  We  are  like  elderly  writers 
who  tend  to  repeat  their  own  beloved  man- 
nerisms, and  who  contemn  and  decry  the  work 
of  younger  men,  despairing  of  the  future.  A 
nation  may  reach  a  point,  like  an  ancient  and 
noble  dynasty  of  princes,  where  it  is  over- 
shadowed and  overweighted  by  its  own  past 
glories,   and  where  it  learns   to   depend  upon 


154  The  Silent  Isle 

prestige  rather  than  upon  vigour,  to  wrap  itself 
in  its  own  dignity.  What  I  would  rather  see 
is  an  elasticity,  a  recklessness,  a  prodigal  trying 
of  experiments,  a  discontented  underrating  of 
past  traditions,  than  a  meek  acquiescence  in 
their  supremacy.  What  is  our  present  condi- 
tion? We  have  few  poets  of  the  first  rank,  few 
essayists  or  reflective  writers,  few  dramatists, 
few  biographers.  I  do  not  at  all  wish  to  under- 
rate the  immense  vitality  of  our  imaginative 
faculties,  which  shows  itself  in  our  vast  output  of 
fiction;  but  even  here  we  have  few  masters,  and 
our  critics  know  and  care  little  for  style ;  they  are 
entirely  preoccupied  with  plot  and  incident  and 
situation.  What  we  lack  is  true  originality, 
tranquil  force;  we  are  all  occupied  in  trying  to 
startle  and  surprise,  to  make  a  sensation.  How 
little  the  Greeks  cared  for  that!  It  was  beauty 
and  charm,  delicate  colour,  fine  subtlety,  of 
which  they  were  in  search;  they  held  all  things 
holy,  yet  nothing  solemn.  Their  dignity  was 
not  a  pompous  dignity,  but  the  dignity  of  high 
tragedy,  of  unconquerable  courage  and  ruthless 
fate ;  not  the  dignity  of  the  well-appointed  house 
and  the  tradition  of  excellent  manners. 

Of  course  our  love  of  wealth  and  comfort  is 
to  a  certain  extent  responsible  for  this.  We 
have  been  thrown  off  our  balance  by  the  vast 
and  rapid  development  of  the  resources  of  the 
earth,  the  binding  of  natural  forces  to  do  our 


The  Modern  Spirit  155 

bidding;  it  is  the  most  complicated  thing  in  the 
world  nowadays  to  live  the  simple  life;  and  not 
until  we  can  gain  a  rich  simplicity,  not  until 
we  can  recover  an  interest  in  ideas  rather  than 
an  appetite  for  comforts,  will  our  force  and 
vitality  return  to  us. 

We  are  all  too  anxious  to  do  the  right  thing 
and  to  be  known  to  the  right  people;  but  un- 
fortunately for  us  the  right  people  are  not  the 
people  of  vivacity  and  intellectual  zest,  but  the 
possessors  of  industrial  wealth  or  the  inheritors 
of  scrupulous  traditions  and  historical  names. 
The  sad  fact,  the  melancholy  truth,  is  that  we 
have  become  vulgar;  and  until  we  can  purge 
ourselves  of  vulgarity,  till  we  can  realise  the 
ineffable  ugliness  of  pomposity  and  pretension 
and  ostentation,  we  shall  effect  nothing.  Even 
our  puritan  forefathers,  with  their  hatred  of 
art,  were  in  love  with  ideas.  They  sipped 
theology  with  the  air  of  connoisseurs ;  they  drank 
down  Hebrew  virtues  with  a  vigorous  relish. 
Then  came  a  rococo  and  affected  age,  neat,  con- 
ceited, and  trim;  yet  in  the  middle  of  that  stood 
out  a  great  rugged  figure  like  Johnson,  full  to 
the  brim  of  impassioned  force.  Then  again  the 
intellect,  the  poetry  of  the  nation  stirred  and 
woke.  In  Wordsworth,  in  Scott,  in  Keats  and 
Shelley  and  Byron,  in  Tennyson  and  Browning, 
in  Carlyle  and  Ruskin,  came  an  age  of  passion- 
ate sincerity  of  protest  against  the  dulness  of 


156  The  Silent  Isle 

prosperity.  But  now  we  seem  to  have  settled 
down  comfortably  to  sleep  again,  and  are  con- 
tent to  fiddle  melodiously  on  delicate  instru- 
ments.    The  trumpet  and  the  horn  are  silent. 

Perhaps  we  must  content  ourselves  with  the 
vigorous  advance  of  science,  the  determination 
to  penetrate  secrets,  to  know  all  that  is  to  be 
known,  not  to  form  conclusions  without  evi- 
dence. But  the  scientific  attitude  tends,  ex- 
cept in  the  highest  minds,  to  develop  a  certain 
dryness,  a  scepticism  about  spiritual  and 
imaginative  forces,  a  dulness  of  the  inner  appre- 
hension, a  hard  quality  of  judgment.  Not  in 
such  a  mood  as  this  does  humanity  fare  further 
and  higher.  Men  become  cautious,  prudent,  and 
decisive  thus,  instead  of  generous,  hopeful, 
and  high-hearted. 

But  to  despair  too  soon  of  an  era,  to  despise 
and  satirise  an  age,  a  national  temper,  is  a  deep 
and  fatal  mistake.  The  world  moves  onwards 
patiently  and  inevitably,  obeying  a  larger  and  a 
mightier  law.  What  is  rather  the  duty  of  all 
who  love  what  is  noble  and  beautiful  is  not  to 
carp  and  bicker  over  faulty  conditions,  but  to 
realise  their  aims  and  hopes,  to  labour  abun- 
dantly and  patiently,  to  speak  and  feel  sin- 
cerely, to  encourage  rather  than  to  condemn. 
Serviendum  Icetandum,  says  the  brave  motto.  To 
serve,  one  cannot  avoid  that;  but  to  serve  with 
blitheness,  that  is  the  secret. 


XXII 

I  cannot  help  wondering  what  the  substance 
was  which  my  fellow-traveller  to-day  was  con- 
suming under  the  outward  guise  of  cigarettes. 
It  had  a  scent  that  was  at  once  strange  and 
afflicting.  It  was  no  more  like  tobacco  than  to- 
bacco is  like  violets.  It  seemed  as  though  it 
must  have  been  carefully  prepared  and  pro- 
cured for  some  unknown  purpose,  but  it  was 
impossible  to  connect  pleasure  with  it.  It  had 
a  corroding  mineral  scent,  and  must  have  been 
digged,  I  think,  out  of  the  bowels  of  the  surely 
not  harmless  earth.  And  the  man  himself! 
He  was  primly  and  precisely  dressed,  but  he  had 
an  indefinable  resemblance  to  a  goat;  his  hair 
curled  like  horns;  and  he  had  the  thin,  restless, 
sneering  lips,  the  impudent,  inexpressive  eyes 
of  the  goat.  I  found  myself  curiously  op- 
pressed by  him.  I  hated  his  slow,  deliberate 
movements;  the  idea  that  the  air  he  breathed 
should  mingle  with  the  air  of  the  carriage, 
and  be  transferred  to  my  own  lungs  and  blood, 
was  horrible  to  me.  I  pitied  those  who  had 
to  serve  him,  and  the   relations  compelled  to 

i57 


158  The  Silent  Isle 

own  him.  Yet  I  cannot  trace  the  origin  of 
this  deep  repugnance.  There  are  innumerable 
natural  objects  far  more  hideous  and  outwardly- 
repellent,  but  which  yet  do  not  possess  this 
nauseating  quality.  Such  shuddering  hostility 
may  lie  far  deeper  than  the  outward  appear- 
ance, and  arise  from  some  innate  enmity  of 
soul.  It  is  a  wholly  unreasonable  thing,  no 
doubt,  and  yet  it  transcends  all  reason  and 
surmounts  all  moral  principle.  I  should  not,  I 
hope,  refuse  to  help  or  succour  such  a  man  if 
he  were  in  need  or  pain ;  but  I  do  not  wish  to  see 
him  or  to  be  near  him,  nor  can  I  desire  that  he 
should  continue  to  exist. 

It  is  an  interesting  question  how  far  it  is 
allowable  to  dislike  other  people.  Of  course  we 
are  bound  to  love  our  enemies  if  we  can,  but  even 
the  Gospel  sets  us  an  example  of  unbounded  and 
uncompromising  denunciation,  in  the  case  of  the 
Pharisees.  It  is  the  habit  of  preachers  to  say 
that  when  we  are  dealing  with  detestable  and 
impossible  people  we  should  perform  that  subtle 
metaphysical  process  that  is  described  as  hating 
the  sin  and  loving  the  sinner.  But  that  is 
surely  a  very  difficult  thing  to  do?  It  is  like 
saying  that  when  one  is  contemplating  a  very 
ugly  and  repulsive  face,  we  are  to  dislike  the 
ugliness  of  it  but  admire  the  face;  and  the  fact 
remains  that  it  is  an  extremely  difficult  and 
complicated  thing  to  do  to  separate  an  individual 


Dislike  159 

from  his  qualities.  The  most  one  can  say  is  that 
one  might  like  him  if  he  were  different  from 
what  he  is;  but  as  long  as  that  remains  what 
the  grammarians  call  an  unfulfilled  condition, 
one's  liking  is  of  a  very  impersonal  nature. 
Such  a  statement  as  that  one  would  like  a  person 
well  enough  if  he  were  only  not  what  he  is,  is 
like  the  speech  that  was  parodied  by  Archbishop 
Whately  in  the  House  of  Lords.  A  speaker  was 
recommending  a  measure  on  the  ground  that 
it  would  be  a  very  satisfactory  one  if  only  the 
conditions  which  it  was  meant  to  meet  were 
different.  "As  much  as  to  say,"  said  Whately 
to  his  neighbour  on  the  conclusion  of  the 
speech,  "that  if  my  aunt  were  a  man,  he  would 
be  my  uncle." 

Of  course  the  thing  is  easy  enough  when  one 
is  dealing,  say,  with  a  fine  and  generous  nature 
which  is  disfigured  by  a  conspicuous  fault.  If 
a  man  who  is  otherwise  lovable  and  admirable 
has  occasional  outbursts  of  spiteful  and  vicious 
ill-temper,  it  is  possible  to  love  him,  because 
one  can  conceive  of  him  without  the  particular 
fault.  But  there  are  some  faults  that  permeate 
and  soak  through  a  man's  whole  character,  as 
in  the  Cornish  squab  pie,  where  an  excellent 
pasty  of  bacon,  potatoes,  and  other  agreeable 
commodities  is  penetrated  throughout  with  the 
oily  flavour  of  a  young  cormorant  which  is 
popped  in  at  the  top  just  before  the  pie  is  baked. 


160  The  Silent  Isle 

If  a  man  is  malignant  or  unreliable  or  mean 
or  selfish,  the  savour  of  his  fault  has  a  way  of 
noisomely  imbuing  all  his  qualities,  especially 
if  he  is  not  aware  of  the  deficiency.  If  a  man 
is  humbly  and  sadly  aware  of  the  thing  that  is 
vile,  if  he  makes  clumsy  and  lamentable  attempts 
to  get  rid  of  it,  one  may  pity  him  so  much  that 
one  may  almost  find  oneself  admiring  him.  One 
feels  that  he  is  made  so,  that  he  cannot  wholly 
help  it,  and  we  lose  ourselves  in  wondering 
why  a  human  being  should  be  so  strangely 
hampered.  But  if  a  man  displays  an  odious 
fault  complacently;  if  he  takes  mean  advantage 
of  other  people,  and  frankly  considers  people 
fools  who  do  not  condescend  to  the  same  de- 
vices; if  he  gives  one  to  understand  that  he 
dislikes  and  despises  one;  if  he  reserves  a  spite- 
ful respect  only  for  those  who  can  beat  him  with 
his  own  weapons;  if  he  is  vulgar,  snobbish, 
censorious,  unkind,  and  self-satisfied  into  the 
bargain,  it  is  very  hard  to  say  what  the  duty  of 
a  Christian  is  in  the  matter.  I  met  the  other 
day,  at  a  country  house,  a  man  whom  I  will 
frankly  confess  that  I  disliked.  He  was  a 
tall,  grim-looking  man,  of  uncompromising 
manners,  who  told  interminable  stories,  mostly 
to  the  discredit  of  other  people — "not  leaving 
Lancelot  brave  or  Galahad  pure."  His  chief 
pleasure  seemed  to  be  in  making  his  hearers 
uncomfortable.     His    stories    were    undeniably 


Dislike  161 

amusing,  but  left  a  bad  taste  in  the  mouth.  He 
had  an  attentive  audience,  mainly,  I  think, 
because  most  of  us  were  afraid  to  say  what  we 
thought  in  his  presence.  He  was  a  man  of  wide 
and  accurate  knowledge,  and  delighted  in  show- 
ing up  other  people's  ignorance.  I  suppose  the 
truest  courage  would  have  been  to  withstand 
him  boldly,  or,  better  still,  to  attempt  to  con- 
vert him  to  a  more  generous  view  of  life.  But 
it  did  not  seem  worth  the  trouble;  it  was  im- 
possible to  argue  with  him  successfully,  and  his 
conversion  seemed  more  a  thing  to  be  prayed 
for  than  to  be  attempted.  One  aged  and  genial 
statesman  who  was  present  did  indeed,  by 
persistent  courtesy,  contrive  to  give  him  a  few 
moments  of  uneasiness;  and  the  sympathies  of 
the  party  were  so  plainly  on  the  side  of  the 
statesman  that  even  our  tyrant  appeared  to 
suspect  that  urbanity  was  sometimes  a  use- 
ful quality.  We  all  breathed  more  freely  when 
he  took  his  departure,  and  there  was  a  general 
sense  of  heightened  enjoyment  abroad. 

Yet  it  is  impossible  to  compassionate  such  a 
man,  because  he  does  not  need  compassion. 
He  is  perfectly  satisfied  with  his  position;  he 
does  not  want  people  to  like  him — he  would 
consider  that  to  be  sentimental,  and  for  senti- 
ment of  every  kind  he  has  a  profound  abhor- 
rence. His  view  of  himself  is,  I  suppose,  of  a 
brilliant  and  capable  man  who  holds  his  own 
ii 


162  The  Silent  Isle 

and  makes  himself  felt.  The  only  result  on 
the  mind,  from  contemplating  him,  is  that  one 
revels  in  the  possibility  of  metempsychosis 
and  pictures  him  as  being  born  again  to  some 
dreary  and  thankless  occupation,  a  scavenger 
or  a  sewer-cleaner,  or,  better  still,  penned  in  the 
body  of  some  absurd  and  inefficient  animal,  a 
slug  or  a  jelly-fish,  where  he  might  learn  to  be 
passive  and  contemptible. 

Meanwhile  it  is  true,  of  course,  that  the  most 
detestable  people  generally  do  improve  upon 
acquaintance.  I  have  seldom  spent  any  length 
of  time  in  the  enforced  society  of  a  disagreeable 
person  without  finding  that  I  liked  him  better 
at  the  end  than  at  the  beginning.  Very  often 
one  finds  that  the  disagreeable  qualities  are 
used  as  a  sort  of  defensive  panoply,  and  that  they 
are  the  result,  to  a  certain  extent,  of  unhappy 
experiences.  Since  I  met  our  friend  I  have 
learnt  a  fact  about  him,  which  makes  me  view 
him  in  a  somewhat  different  light.  I  have 
discovered  that;  he  was  bullied  at  school.  I  am 
inclined  to  believe  that  his  fondness  for  bullying 
other  people  is  mainly  the  result  of  this,  and  that 
it  arises  partly  from  a  rooted  belief  that  other 
people  are  malevolent,  and  that  the  only 
method  is  to  exhibit  his  own  spines;  partly  also 
from  a  perverted  sense  of  justice ;  on  the  ground 
that,  as  he  had  to  bear  undeserved  persecution 
in  the  days  when  he  was  defenceless,  it  is  but 


Dislike  163 

just  that  others  should  bear  it  in  their  turn. 
He  is  like  the  cabin-boy  Ransome  in  Kidnapped, 
who,  being  treated  with  the  grossest  brutality 
by  the  officers,  kept  a  rope's  end  of  his  own  to 
wallop  the  little  ones  with.  I  do  not  say  that 
this  is  a  generous  or  high-hearted  view  of  life. 
It  would  be  better  if  he  could  say  Miseris  suc- 
currere  disco.  What  he  rather  says,  to  parody 
the  words  of  the  hermit  in  Edwin  and  Angelina, 
is — 

"  The  flocks  that  range  the  valley  free, 
,  To  slaughter  I  condemn; 
Taught  by  the  Power  that  bullies  me, 
I  learn  to  bully  them." 

It  is  a  poor  consolation  to  say  that  the  man 
who  is  not  loved  is  miserable.  He  is,  if  he  desires 
to  be  loved  and  cannot  attain  it;  if  he  says,  as 
Hazlitt  said,  "I  cannot  make  out  why  every- 
body should  dislike  me  so. "  But  if  he  does  not 
want  love  in  the  least,  while  he  gets  what  he 
does  desire — money,  a  place  in  the  world,  in- 
fluence of  a  sort — then  he  is  not  miserable  at 
all,  and  it  is  idle  to  pretend  that  he  is. 

But  if,  as  I  say,  one  is  condemned  to  the 
society  of  a  disagreeable  person,  it  generally 
happens  that  on  his  discovering  one  to  be  harm- 
less and  friendly  he  will  furl  his  spines  and  be- 
come, if  not  an  animal  that  one  can  safely 
stroke,  at  least  an  animal  whose  proximity  it  is 


164  The  Silent  Isle 

not  necessary  to  dread  and  avoid.  One  can 
generally  establish  a  modus  vivendi,  and  unless 
the  man  is  untrustworthy  as  well,  one  may 
hope  to  live  peacefully  with  him.  The  worst 
point  about  our  friend  is  that  he  is  frankly 
jealous,  and  woe  betide  you  if  you  gain  any 
species  of  reputation  on  lines  that  he  does  not 
approve.  Then  indeed  nothing  can  save  you, 
because  he  resents  your  success  as  a  personal 
injury  done  to  his  own. 

The  truth  is  that  any  one  who  has  any  pro- 
nounced views  at  all,  any  definite  strain  of 
temperament,  is  sure  to  encounter  people  who 
are  entirely  uncongenial.  What  one  is  bound 
to  do  is  to  realise  that  there  is  abundant  room 
for  all  kinds  of  personalities  in  the  world,  and  it 
is  much  better  not  to  protest  and  censure  un- 
less one  is  absolutely  certain  that  the  tempera- 
ment one  dislikes  is  a  mischievous  one.  It  is 
not  necessarily  mischievous  to  be  quarrelsome, 
though  a  peaceable  person  may  dislike  it. 
There  is  no  reason  whatever  why  two  quarrel- 
some people,  if  they  enjoy  it,  should  not  have  a 
good  set-to.  What  is  mischievous  is  if  a  man 
is  brutal  and  tyrannical,  and  prefers  a  tussle 
with  an  inoffensive  person  who  is  no  match  for 
him.  That  is  a  piece  of  cowardice,  and  protest 
is  more  than  justifiable.  There  is  a  fine  true 
story  of  a  famous  head-master,  who  disliked  a 
weakling,  putting  on  a  stupid,  shy,  and  ungainly 


Condemnation  165 

boy  to  construe,  and  making  deliberate  fun  of 
him.  There  was  a  boy  present,  of  the  stuff  of 
which  heroes  are  made,  who  got  up  suddenly  in 
his  place  and  said,  "You  are  not  teaching  that 
boy,  sir;  you  are  bullying  him."  The  head- 
master had  the  generosity  to  bear  his  censurer 
no  grudge  for  his  outspokenness.  But  even  if 
one  is  sure  that  one 's  indignation  is  justified  and 
that  one's  contempt  is  deserved,  it  is  a  very 
dangerous  thing  to  assume  the  disapproving 
attitude.  One  may  know  enough  of  a  man  to 
withstand  him  to  the  face,  if  one  is  sure  that  his 
action  is  base  or  cruel ;  one  can  hardly  ever  know 
enough  of  a  man's  temperament  and  antece- 
dents to  condemn  him  unreservedly.  It  is 
scarcely  possible  to  be  sure  that  a  man  is  worse 
than  he  need  have  been,  or  that  one  would  have 
done  better  if  one  had  been  in  his  place;  and 
thus  one  must  try  to  resist  any  expression  of 
personal  disapproval,  because  such  an  expres- 
sion implies  a  consciousness  of  moral  superiority, 
and  the  moment  that  one  is  conscious  of  that,  as 
in  the  parable  of  the  Pharisee  and  the  Publi- 
can, the  position  of  the  condemner  and  the 
condemned  is  instantaneously  reversed.  To  hate 
people  is  the  most  dangerous  luxury  that  one 
can  indulge  in,  and  the  most  that  one  is  justified 
in  doing  is  to  avoid  the  society  of  entirely 
uncongenial  people.  It  is  not  a  duty  to  force 
yourself  to  try  to  admire  and  like  everyone 


166  The  Silent  Isle 

who  repels  you.  The  truth  is  that  life  is  not  long 
enough  for  such  experiments.  But  one  can 
resolutely  abstain  from  condemning  them  and 
from  dwelling  in  thought  and  speech  upon  their 
offensive  qualities.  Nous  sommes  tous  con- 
damnes,  says  the  sad  proverb,  and  we  have  most 
of  us  enough  to  do  in  rooting  up  the  tares  in 
our  own  field,  without  pointing  out  other 
people's  tares  exultantly  to  passers-by. 


XXIII 

The  great  fen  to-day  was  full,  far  and  wide,  of 
little  smouldering  fires.  On  fallow  after  fallow, 
there  lay  small  burning  heaps  of  roots  and  fibres, 
carefully  collected,  kindled,  tended.  I  tried  to 
learn  from  an  old  labourer  what  it  was  that  he 
was  burning,  but  I  could  not  understand  his 
explanation,  and  I  am  not  sure  that  he  knew 
himself.  Perhaps  it  was  the  tares,  as  in  the 
parable,  that  were  at  length  gathered  into  heaps 
and  burned!  Anyhow,  it  was  a  pretty  sight  to 
see  the  white  smoke,  all  at  one  delicate  angle, 
rising  into  the  clear,  cloudless  sky  on  the  soft 
September  breeze.  The  village  on  the  wooded 
ridge,  with  the  pale,  irregular  houses  rising 
among  the  orchards,  gained  a  gentle  richness 
of  outline  from  the  drifting  smoke.  It  reminded 
me,  too,  of  the  Isle  of  Voices,  and  the  little 
magic  fires  that  rose  and  were  extinguished 
again,  while  the  phantom  voices  rang  in  the 
sea-breeze. 

It  made  for  me,  as  I  passed  slowly  across 
the  great  flat,  a  soft  parable  of  the  seasons  of 
the  soul,  when  gratefully  and  joyfully  it  burns 

its   gathered   failures    when   the    harvest    time 

167 


168  The  Silent  Isle 

is  over.  Failures  in  aim,  indolence,  morbid 
glooms,  doubts  of  capacity,  unwise  words, 
irritable  interferences — what  a  vista  of  mistakes 
as  one  looks  back!  But  there  come  days  when, 
with  a  grateful,  sober  joy — the  joy  of  feeling 
thankful  that  things  have  not  been  worse, 
that  one  has  somehow  emerged,  and  that  there 
is  after  all  a  little  good  grain  in  the  garner — 
one  gathers  one's  faults  and  misdeeds  into 
heaps  for  the  burning. 

The  difficulty  is  to  believe  that  they  are 
burned;  one  thinks  of  the  old  fault,  with  evil 
fertility,  ever  ripening  and  seeding,  ever  in- 
creasing its  circle.  Well,  it  is  so  in  a  sense, 
however  diligently  we  gather  and  burn.  But 
there  is  enough  hopefulness  left  for  us  to  begin 
our  ploughing  and  sowing  afresh,  I  think. 

I  have  had  a  great  burning  lately!  I  saw,  in 
the  mirror  of  a  book,  written  by  one  who  knew 
me  well,  and  who  yet  wrote,  I  am  sure,  in  no 
vindictive  or  personal  spirit,  how  ugly  and  mean 
a  thing  a  temperament  like  mine  could  be.  One 
needs  a  shock  like  that  every  now  and  then, 
because  it  is  so  easy  to  drift  into  a  mild  com- 
placency, to  cast  up  a  rough  sum  of  one's  quali- 
ties, and  to  conclude  that  though  there  is  much 
to  be  ashamed  of,  yet  that  the  total,  for  any 
who  knew  all  the  elements  of  the  problem,  is  on 
the  whole  a  creditable  one.  But  here  in  my 
friend's  book,  who  knew  as  much  of  the  elements 


Tares  169 

of  the  problem  as  any  one  could,  the  total  was 
a  minus  quantity! 

How  is  one  to  make  it  otherwise?  Alas,  I 
know  how  little  one  can  do,  but  so  long  as  one 
is  humiliated  and  ashamed,  and  feels  the  keen 
flame  scorching  the  vicious  fibre,  something, 
we  may  be  sure,  is  being  done  for  us,  some 
heavenly  alchemy  that  shall  make  all  things 
new. 

How  shall  I  tell  my  friend  that  I  am  grate- 
ful? The  very  telling  of  it  will  make  him  feel 
guilty  of  a  sort  of  treachery,  which  he  did  not 
design.  So  I  must  be  silent  for  awhile;  and, 
above  all,  resist  the  feeling,  natural  enough  in 
the  first  humiliation,  that  one  would  like  to 
send  some  fire-tailed  fox  into  his  standing-corn 
as  well. 

There  is  no  impulse  to  be  more  carefully  and 
jealously  guarded  than  the  impulse  which  tells 
us  that  we  are  bound  to  speak  unpleasant  truths 
to  one's  friends.  It  must  be  resisted  until 
seventy  times  seven!  It  can  only  be  yielded 
to  if  there  is  nothing  but  pure  pain  in  the  doing 
of  it ;  if  there  is  the  least  touch  of  satisfaction  or 
zest  about  it,  it  may  be  safely  put  aside. 

And  so  to-day  I  will  stand  for  a  little  and 
watch  the  slow  smoke  drifting  heavenwards 
from  the  dry  weeds  of  my  soul.  It  is  not  a  sad 
experience,  though  the  fingers  of  the  fire  are 
sharp!     Rather  as  the  rich  smoke  rolls  into  the 


170  The  Silent  Isle 

air,  and  then  winds  and  hangs  in  airy  veils, 
there  comes  a  sense  of  relief,  of  lightness,  of 
burdens  not  stricken  harshly  off,  but  softly  and 
cleanly  purged  away. 


XXIV 

One  meets  a  great  many  people  of  various 
kinds,  old  and  young,  kind  and  severe,  amiable 
and  harsh,  gentle  and  dry,  rude  and  polite, 
tiresome  and  interesting.  One  meets  men  whom 
one  is  sure  are  virtuous,  honourable,  conscien- 
tious, and  able;  one  meets  women  of  character, 
and  ingenuousness,  and  charm,  and  beauty.  But 
the  thing  that  really  interests  me  is  to  meet  a  per- 
son— and  it  is  not  a  common  experience — who 
has  made  something  of  himself  or  herself;  who 
began  with  one  set  of  qualities,  and  who  has 
achieved  another  set  of  qualities,  by  desiring 
them  and  patiently  practising  them;  who,  one 
is  sure,  has  a  peculiar  sympathy  drawn  from 
experience,  and  a  wisdom  matured  by  conflict 
and  effort. 

As  a  rule,  one  feels  that  people  are  very  much 
the  same  as  they  began  by  being.  They  are 
awkward  and  have  not  learned  to  be  easy; 
they  are  dull  and  have  not  learned  to  be  inter- 
esting; or  they  are  clever  and  have  not  learned 
to  be  sympathetic;  or  charming  and  have  not 
learned  to  be  loyal;  who  are  satisfied,  in  fact, 

171 


172  The  Silent  Isle 

with  being  what  they  are.  But  what  a  delight- 
ful and  reviving  thing  it  is  to  meet  one  whose 
glance  betrays  a  sort  of  tenderness,  a  gentleness, 
a  desire  to  establish  a  relationship ;  who  means  to 
like  one,  if  he  can ;  whose  face  bears  signs  of  the 
conflict  of  spirit,  in  which  selfishness  and  com- 
placency have  been  somehow  eradicated;  who 
understands  one's  clumsy  hints  and  interprets 
one's  unexpressed  feelings;  who  goes  about, 
one  knows,  looking  out  for  beautiful  qualities 
and  for  subtle  relationships;  who  evokes  the 
best  of  people,  their  confidence,  their  true  and 
natural  selves,  who  is  not  in  the  least  concerned 
with  making  an  impression  or  being  thought 
wise  or  clever  or  brilliant,  but  who  just  hopes 
for  companionship  and  equality  of  soul. 

Sometimes,  indeed,  one  does  not  discern  this 
largeness  and  wisdom  of  spirit  quite  at  first 
sight,  though  it  is  generally  revealed  by  aspect 
even  more  than  by  words.  Sometimes  these 
brotherly  and  sisterly  persons  have  a  fence  of 
shyness  which  cannot  be  instantly  overleapt; 
but  one  generally  can  discern  the  beautiful 
creature  waiting  gently  within.  But  as  a  rule 
these  gracious  people  have  nothing  that  is 
formidable  or  daunting  about  them;  they  are 
quiet  and  simple;  and  having  no  cards  to  play 
and  no  game  to  win,  they  are  at  leisure  to  make 
the  best  of  other  people. 

I  have  met  both  men  and  women  of  this 


Self-Improvement  173 

apostolic  kind,  and  one  feels  that  they  under- 
stand; that  in  their  tranquil  maturity  they  can 
make  allowances  for  crude  immaturity ;  that  they 
do  not  at  once  dismiss  one  as  being  foolishly 
young  or  tiresomely  elderly:  they  have  no  sub- 
jects of  their  own  which  they  are  vexed  at  find- 
ing misunderstood  or  not  comprehended.  They 
do  not  think  the  worse  of  a  person  for  having 
preferences  or  prejudices;  though  when  one  has 
uttered  a  raw  preference  or  an  unreasonable 
prejudice  in  their  presence  one  is  ashamed,  as 
one  is  for  hurling  a  stone  into  a  sleeping  pool. 
One  comes  away  from  them  desiring  to  appre- 
ciate rather  than  to  contemn,  with  horizons 
and  vistas  of  true  and  beautiful  things  opening 
up  on  all  sides,  with  a  wish  to  know  more  and  to 
understand  more,  and  to  believe  more;  with  the 
sense  of  a  desirable  secret  of  which  they  have 
the  possession. 

One  meets  sometimes  exactly  the  opposite 
of  all  this,  a  lively,  brilliant,  contemptuous 
specialist,  who  talks  briskly  and  lucidly  about  his 
own  subject,  and  makes  one  feel  humble  and 
clumsy  and  drowsy.  One  sees  that  he  is  pleased 
to  talk,  and  when  the  ball  rolls  to  one's  feet, 
one  makes  a  feeble  effort  to  toss  it  back, 
whereupon  he  makes  a  fine  stroke,  with  an  ill- 
concealed  contempt  for  a  person  who  is  so  ill- 
informed.  Perhaps  it  is  good  to  be  humiliated 
thus;  but  it  is  not  pleasant,  and  the  worst  of  it 


174  The  Silent  Isle 

is  that  one  confuses  the  subject  with  the  per- 
sonality behind  it,  and  thinks  that  the  subject 
is  dreary  when  it  is  only  the  personality  that  is 
repellent. 

Such  a  man  is  repellent,  because  he  is  self- 
absorbed,  conceited,  contemptuous.  He  has 
grown  up  inside  a  sort  of  walled  fortress,  and 
he  thinks  that  every  one  outside  is  a  knave 
or  a  fool.  He  has  not  changed.  It  is  this 
change,  this  progress  of  the  soul  that  is 
adorable. 

The  question  for  most  of  us — a  sad  question 
too — is  whether  this  change,  this  progress,  is 
attainable,  or  whether  a  power  of  growth  is 
given  to  some  people  and  denied  to  others.  I 
am  afraid  that  this  is  partially  true.  A  good 
many  people  seem  to  be  born  inside  a  hard 
carapace  which  cannot  expand;  and  it  protects 
them  from  the  sensitive  apprehension  of  injury 
and  hurt,  which  is  in  reality  the  only  condition  of 
growth.  If  we  feel  our  failures,  if  we  see,  every 
now  and  then,  how  unjustly,  unkindly,  per- 
versely we  have  behaved,  we  try  to  be  different 
next  time.  Perhaps  the  motive  is  not  a  very 
high  one,  because  it  is  to  avoid  similar  suffering; 
but  we  improve  a  little  and  a  little. 

Of  course,  occasionally,  one  meets  people 
who  have  not  changed  much,  because  they 
started  on  so  high  a  plane — it  is  commoner  to 
find  this  among  women  than  among  men;  they 


Self-Forgetfulness  175 


& 


have  begun  life  tender,  loyal,  unselfish;  it  has 
always  been  a  greater  happiness  to  see  that  peo- 
ple round  them  are  pleased  than  to  find  their 
own  satisfaction.  Such  people  are  often  what 
the  world  calls  ineffective,  because  they  have  no 
selfish  object  to  attain.  I  have  a  friend  who 
is  like  that.  He  is  what  would  be  called  an  un- 
successful man ;  he  has  never  had  time  to  do  his 
own  talents  justice,  because  his  energies  have 
always  been  at  the  service  of  other  people;  if 
you  ask  him  to  do  something  for  you,  he  does 
it  as  exactly,  as  punctually,  as  faithfully  as  if  his 
own  reputation  depended  upon  it.  He  is  now 
a  middle-aged  man  with  hundreds  of  friends  and 
a  small  income.  He  lives  in  a  poky  house  in  a 
suburb,  and  works  harder  than  any  one  I  know. 
If  one  meets  him  he  has  always  the  same  beauti- 
ful, tired  smile;  and  he  has  fifty  things  to  ask 
one,  all  about  oneself.  I  can't  describe  what 
good  it  does  one  to  meet  him.  The  other  day  I 
met  a  cousin  of  his,  a  prosperous  man  of  business. 
"Yes,"  he  said,  "poor  Harry  goes  on  in  his 
feckless  way.  I  gave  him  a  bit  of  my  mind 
the  other  day.  I  said,  'Oh,  it  's  all  very  well 
to  be  always  at  every  one's  beck  and  call, 
and  ready  to  give  up  your  time  to  any  one 
who  asks  you — it  is  very  pleasant,  of  course, 
and  every  one  speaks  well  of  you — but  it 
does  n't  pay,  my  dear  fellow;  and  you  really 
ought  to  be  thinking  about  making  a  position 


176  The  Silent  Isle 

for  yourself,  though  I  am  very  much  afraid  it 
is  too  late.'  " 

The  prosperous  cousin  did  not  tell  me  how 
Harry  received  his  advice;  but  I  have  no  doubt 
that  he  thought  his  cousin  very  kind  to  interest 
himself  in  his  position,  and  went  away  absurdly 
grateful.  But  I  would  rather,  for  all  that,  be 
in  Harry's  poky  lodgings,  with  a  treasure  of 
love  and  service  in  my  heart,  than  in  his 
cousin 's  fine  house  in  the  country,  the  centre  of 
a  respectful  and  indifferent  circle. 

Of  course  there  is  one  sad  reflection  that 
rises  in  one's  mind  at  the  thought  of  such  a  life 
as  my  friend  lives.  When  one  sees  what  a 
difference  he  makes  to  so  many  people,  and 
what  a  beautiful  thing  his  life  is,  one  wonders 
vaguely  why,  if  God  makes  men  as  he  wills, 
he  does  not  make  more  of  such  natures.  They 
are  rare ;  they  are  the  salt  of  the  world ;  and  I  sup- 
pose that  if  the  world  were  all  salt,  it  would  not 
be  so  rich  and  beautiful  a  place.  If  every  one 
were  like  Harry  there  would  be  no  one  left  to 
help;  and  I  suppose  that  God  has  some  reason 
for  leaving  the  world  imperfect,  which  even  we, 
in  our  infinite  wisdom,  cannot  precisely  detect. 


XXV 

It  is  such  a  perennial  mystery  to  me  what 
beauty  is;  it  baffles  me  entirely.  No  one  has 
ever  helped  me  to  discover  in  what  region  of 
the  spirit  it  abides.  The  philosopher  begins  by 
telling  you  that  the  simplest  and  most  elemen- 
tary form  of  beauty  which  appeals  to  every 
one,  the  beauty  of  human  beings,  has  its  root 
originally  only  in  desire;  but  I  cannot  follow 
that,  because  that  would  only  account  for  one's 
admiring  a  certain  kind  of  fresh  and  youthful 
beauty,  and  in  admiring  human  beauty  less 
and  less  as  it  declines  from  that.  But  this  is 
not  the  case  at  all;  because  there  is  a  beauty  of 
age  which  is  often,  in  its  way,  a  more  impressive 
and  noble  thing  than  the  beauty  of  youth.  And 
there  is,  too,  the  beauty  of  expression,  a  far 
more  subtle  and  moving  thing  than  mere  beauty 
of  feature:  we  must  have  often  seen,  for  instance, 
a  face  which  by  all  the  canons  of  beauty  might 
be  pronounced  admirable,  yet  the  effect  of 
which  is  wholly  unattractive;  while,  on  the 
other  hand,  we  have  known  faces  that,  from 

some  ruggedness  or  want  of  proportion,  seemed 
12  i77 


178  The  Silent  Isle 

at  first  sight  even  repellent,  which  have  yet  come 
to  hold  for  one  an  extraordinary  quality  of 
attractiveness,  from  the  beauty  of  the  soul 
being  somehow  revealed  in  them,  and  are  yet 
as  remote  from  any  sense  of  desire  as  the  beauty 
of  a  tree  or  a  crag. 

And  then,  again,  in  dealing  with  the  beauty  of 
nature,  I  have  heard  philosophers  say  that  the 
appeal  which  it  makes  is  traceable  to  a  sense 
of  prosperity  or  well-being ;  and  that  the  love  of 
landscape  has  grown  up  out  of  the  sense  of 
satisfaction  with  which  our  primaeval  ancestors 
saw  a  forest  full  of  useful  timber  and  crowded 
with  edible  game.  But  that  again  is  entirely 
contradicted  by  my  experience. 

I  went  to-day  on  a  vague  walk  in  the  country, 
taking  attractive  by-ways  and  field-paths,  and 
came  in  the  course  of  the  afternoon  to  a  lonely 
village  among  wide  pastures  which  I  had  never 
visited  before.  The  bell-like  sound  of  smitten 
metal,  ringing  cheerfully  from  a  smithy,  out- 
lined against  the  roar  of  a  blown  fire,  seemed  to 
set  my  mind  in  tune.  I  turned  into  the  tiny 
street.  The  village  lies  on  no  high-road;  it  is 
remote  and  difficult  of  access,  but  at  one  time 
it  enjoyed  a  period  of  prosperity  because  of  a 
reputation  for  dairy  produce;  and  there  were 
half-a-dozen  big  farm-houses  on  the  street,  of 
different  dates,  which  testified  to  this.  There 
was  an  old  timbered  Grange,  deserted,  falling 


The  Quality  of  Beauty        179 

into  ruin.  There  was  a  house  with  charming 
high  brick  gables  at  either  end,  with  little  bat- 
tlemented  crow-steps,  and  with  graceful  chim- 
ney-stacks at  the  top.  There  was  another  solid 
Georgian  house,  with  thick  white  casements 
and  moss-grown  tiling — all  of  them  showing 
signs  of  neglect  and  fallen  fortunes. 

But  the  ruined  Grange,  with  a  moat  round  it 
full  of  willows  and  big  water-plants,  approached 
by  a  pretty  bridge  with  ruinous  parapets,  had 
the  perfect  quality  of  beauty.  Yet  all  the 
associations  that  it  aroused  were  sad  ones.  It 
spoke  of  an  old  and  prosperous  family  life,  full 
of  simple  happiness,  brought  to  an  end  of  de- 
sertion and  desolation.  It  seemed  to  say, 
like  the  Psalmist,  "I  see  that  all  things  come  to 
an  end."  Just  opposite  was  a  new  and  com- 
fortable farm-house,  the  only  prosperous  house 
in  the  village,  with  a  trim  lawn,  and  big  barns 
covered  with  corrugated  iron  roofing.  Every- 
thing about  it  spoke  of  comfort  and  security. 
Yet  the  only  appeal  that  it  made  to  the  spirit 
was  that  one  wished  it  out  of  sight,  while  the 
ruined  Grange  touched  the  heart  with  yearning 
and  pathos,  and  even  with  a  far-off  and  beauti- 
ful hope.  The  transfiguring  hand  of  time  was 
laid  gently  upon  it,  and  there  was  not  a  single 
detail  of  the  scene  which  was  not  filled  with  a 
haunting  sense  of  delight  and  sweetness. 

It  was  just  at  sunset  that  I  saw  it;  and  as  the 


180  The  Silent  Isle 

sun  went  down  and  the  colour  began  to  ebb  out 
of  bush  and  wall,  the  sense  of  its  beauty  and 
grace  became  every  instant  more  and  more 
acute.  A  long  train  of  rooks,  flying  quietly 
homeward,  drifted  across  the  rose-flushed  clouds. 
Everything  alike  spoke  of  peace,  of  a  quiet 
ending,  of  closed  eyes  and  weary  hearts  at 
rest.  And  yet  the  sense  was  not  a  joyful  one, 
for  it  was  all  overshadowed  by  a  consciousness 
of  the  unattainable.  What  increased  the  mys- 
tery was  that  the  very  thought  that  it  could  not 
be  attained,  the  yearning  for  the  impossible, 
was  what  seemed  to  lend  the  deepest  sense  of 
beauty  to  the  scene.  Who  can  interpret  these 
things?  Who  can  show  why  it  is  that  the 
sense  of  beauty,  that  deep  hunger  of  the  heart, 
is  built  up  on  the  fact  that  the  dream  cannot 
be  realised?  Yet  so  it  is.  The  sense  of  beauty, 
whatever  it  may  be,  seems  to  depend  upon  the 
fact  that  the  soul  there  catches  a  glimpse  of 
something  that  waits  to  bless  it — and  upon 
which  it  cannot  lay  its  hand;  or  is  aware  that  if 
it  does  for  a  moment  apprehend  it,  yet  that  a 
moment  later  it  will  be  dragged  rudely  back 
into  a  different  region.  The  sense  of  beauty 
is  then  of  its  nature  accompanied  by  sadness; 
it  is  essentially  evanescent.  A  beautiful  thing 
with  which  we  grow  familiar  stands  often  before 
us  dumb  and  inarticulate,  with  no  appeal  to 
the  spirit.     Then  perhaps  on  a  sudden  move- 


The  Quality  of  Beauty         181 

ment,  the  door  of  the  spirit  is  unlatched,  and  the 
soul  for  a  moment  discerns  the  sweet  essence, 
to  which  an  instant  before  it  had  been  wholly 
unresponsive,  and  which  an  instant  later  will 
lose  its  power.  It  seems  to  point  to  a  possible 
satisfaction;  and  yet  it  owes  its  poignancy  to 
the  fact  that  the  heart  is  still  unsatisfied. 


XXVI 

I  once  wrote  and  published  a  personal  and 
intimate  book;  it  was  a  curious  experience. 
There  was  a  certain  admixture  of  fiction  in  it, 
but  in  the  main  it  was  a  confession  of  opinions; 
for  various  reasons  the  book  had  a  certain  vogue, 
and  though  it  was  published  anonymously,  the 
authorship  was  within  my  own  circle  detected. 
I  saw  several  reviews  of  it,  and  I  was  amused  to 
find  that  the  critics  perspicuously  conjectured 
that  because  it  was  written  in  the  first  person 
it  was  probably  autobiographical.  I  had  sev- 
eral criticisms  made  on  it  by  personal  friends : 
some  of  them  objected  to  the  portraiture  of 
persons  in  it  being  too  life-like,  selecting  as 
instances  two  characters  who  were  entirely 
imaginary;  others  objected  to  the  portraiture 
as  not  being  sufficiently  life-like,  and  therefore 
tending  to  mislead  the  reader.  Others  deter- 
mined to  see  in  the  book  a  literal  transcript  of 
fact,  set  themselves  to  localise  and  identify 
incidents  which  were  pure  fiction,  introduced 
for  reasons  of  picturesqucness.  It  brought  me, 
too,    a   whole   crop   of   letters   from   unknown 

182 


A  Personal  Book  183 

people,  many  of  which  were  very  interesting  and 
touching,  letters  which  pleased  and  encouraged 
me  greatly,  because  they  proved  that  the  book 
had  made  its  way  at  all  events  to  certain  hearts. 

But  one  old  friend,  whose  taste  and  judgment 
I  have  every  reason  to  respect,  took  me  to 
task  very  seriously  for  writing  the  book.  He 
said:  "You  will  not  misunderstand  me,  I  know; 
but  I  cannot  help  feeling  that  the  deliberate 
exposure  of  a  naked  soul  before  the  public 
has  something  that  is  almost  indecent  about  it. " 
I  did  not  misunderstand  him,  nor  did  I  at  all 
resent  the  faithful  criticism,  even  though  I 
could  not  agree  with  it. 

I  had  written  books  before,  and  I  have 
written  books  since,  but  none  which  made  that 
particular  personal  appeal.  I  may  proudly 
say  that  it  contained  nothing  that  was  con- 
trary either  to  faith  or  morals;  it  was  quite 
unobjectionable.  It  aimed  at  making  thought 
a  little  clearer,  hope  a  little  brighter;  at  disen- 
tangling some  of  the  complex  fibres  of  beauty 
and  interest  which  are  interwoven  into  the  fabric 
of  life.  I  tried  to  put  down  very  plainly  some 
of  the  things  that  had  helped  me,  some  of  the 
sights  that  had  pleased  me,  some  of  the  thoughts 
that  had  fed  me.  I  do  not  really  know  what  else 
is  the  purpose  of  writing  at  all ;  it  is  only  a  kind 
of  extended  human  intercourse.  I  am  not  a 
good    conversationalist;    my    thoughts    do    not 


184  The  Silent  Isle 

flow  fast  enough,  do  not  come  crowding  to  the 
lips;  moreover,  the  personalities  of  those  with 
whom  I  talk  affect  me  too  strongly.  There 
are  people  with  whom  one  cannot  be  natural 
or  sincere.  There  are  people  whose  whole 
range  of  interests  is  different  from  one's  own. 
There  are  critical  people  who  love  to  trip  one  up 
and  lay  one  flat,  boisterous  people  who  disa- 
gree, ironical  people  who  mock  one's  sentiment, 
matter-of-fact  people  who  dislike  one's  fancies. 
But  one  can  talk  in  a  book  without  gene  or 
restraint.  It  is  like  talking  to  a  perfectly  sym- 
pathetic listener  when  no  third  person  is  by.  I 
wrote  the  book  without  premeditation  and  with- 
out calculation,  just  as  the  thoughts  rose  to  my 
mind,  as  I  should  like  to  speak  to  the  people  I 
met,  if  I  had  the  art  and  the  courage.  Well,  it 
found  its  way,  I  am  glad  to  think,  to  the  right 
people;  and  as  for  exposing  my  heart  for  all  the 
world  to  read,  I  cannot  see  why  one  should  not 
do  that!  I  am  not  ashamed  of  anything  that 
I  said,  and  I  have  no  sort  of  objection  to  any  one 
knowing  what  I  think,  if  they  care  to  know. 
I  spoke,  if  I  may  say  so  without  conceit,  just 
as  a  bird  will  sing,  careless  who  listens  to  it. 
If  the  people  who  wander  in  the  garden  do  not 
like  the  song,  the  garden  is  mine  as  well  as 
theirs;  they  need  not  listen,  or  they  can  scare 
the  bird  with  ugly  gestures  out  of  his  bush  if 
they  will.     I  have  never  been  able  to  sympathise 


Privacy  185 

with  that  jealous  sense  of  privacy  about  one's 
thoughts,  that  is  so  strong  in  some  people.  I 
like  to  be  able  to  be  alone  and  to  have  my 
little  stronghold;  but  that  is  because  the  pre- 
sence of  conventional  and  unsympathetic  peo- 
ple bores  and  tires  me.  But  in  a  book  it  is 
different.  One  is  not  intruded  upon  or  gazed 
at;  one  may  tell  exactly  as  much  of  one's  inner 
life  as  one  will — and  there  are,  of  course,  many 
things  which  I  would  not  commit  to  the  pages 
of  a  book,  or  even  tell  a  friend.  But  I  put 
nothing  in  my  book  that  I  would  not  have 
said  quite  readily  to  a  friend  whom  I  loved 
and  trusted;  and  I  like  to  feel  that  the  book  has 
made  me  several  gentle  and  unknown  friends, 
whose  company  the  laws  of  time  and  space 
forbid  me  to  frequent.  And  more  than  that, 
there  might  be  things  about  the  people  who 
liked  my  book  which  I  should  not  like;  super- 
ficial things  such  as  manner  or  look;  I  might 
not  even  like  their  opinions  on  certain  points; 
but  now,  by  writing  this  book,  the  best  part  of 
me,  I  think,  has  made  friends  with  the  best 
part  of  them.  All  art  depends  upon  a  certain 
kinship  of  spirit  between  the  man  who  pro- 
duces and  the  men  who  perceive;  and  just  as  a 
painter  may  speak  to  kindred  spirits  in  a  picture, 
or  as  a  preacher  may  show  his  own  heart  in  a 
sermon,  so  a  writer  may  reveal  himself  in  a 
book,  if  he  is  so  inclined.     The  best  kind  of 


186  The  Silent  Isle 

friendship  is  made  in  that  way.  the  friendship 
that  is  not  at  the  mercy  of  superficial  appear- 
ances, habits,  modes  of  breeding,  conventions, 
which  erect  a  barrier  in  this  mysterious  world 
between  the  souls  of  men. 

Perhaps  one  of  the  greatest  interests  and 
pleasures  we  have  in  life  is  the  realising  of  dif- 
ferent temperaments  and  different  points  of 
view.  It  is  not  only  interesting,  it  is  whole- 
some and  bracing.  It  helps  us  out  of  egotism; 
it  makes  us  sympathetic ;  and  I  wish  with  all  my 
heart  that  people  would  put  more  of  their  own 
unadulterated  selves  into  books;  that  would  be 
real,  at  all  events.  But  what  writers  so  often 
do  is  to  tell  the  adventures  of  imaginary  people, 
write  plays  where  persons  behave  as  no  one 
ever  behaves  in  real  life;  or  they  turn  to  what  is 
called  serious  literature,  and  write  a  history  of 
things  of  which  no  one  can  ever  know  the 
truth;  or  they  make  wise  and  subtle  comments 
on  the  writings  of  great  authors,  covering  them 
with  shining  tracks,  as  when  snails  crawl  over 
a  wall  and  leave  their  mucus  behind  them. 
And  there  are  many  other  sorts  of  books  which 
I  need  not  define  here,  some  of  them  useful,  no 
doubt,  and  some  of  them  wearisome  enough. 
But  the  books  of  which  we  can  never  have 
enough  are  the  books  which  tell  us  what  peo- 
ple are  really  like,  because  our  true  concern  is 
with  the  souls  of  men;  and  if  we  are  all  bound, 


Self-Revelation  187 

as  I  believe  we  are,  upon  a  progress  and  a  pil- 
grimage, though  the  way  is  dark  and  the  goal 
remote,  the  more  we  can  know  of  our  fellow- 
pilgrims  the  better  for  ourselves.  This  know- 
ledge can  teach  us,  perhaps,  to  avoid  mistakes, 
or  can  make  us  ashamed  of  not  being  better 
than  we  are;  or,  best  of  all,  it  may  lead  us  to 
love  and  pity  those  who  are  like  ourselves, 
to  bear  their  burdens  when  we  can,  to  comfort, 
to  help.  I  think  it  would  be  far  better  if  we 
could  talk  more  simply  and  openly  to  each 
other  of  our  hopes  and  fears — what  we  love, 
what  we  dread,  what  we  avoid.  The  saddest 
thing  in  the  world  is  to  feel  that  we  are  alone; 
the  best  thing  in  the  world  is  to  feel  that  we 
are  loved  and  needed. 

However,  as  things  are,  the  sad  fact  remains 
that  in  common  talk  we  speak  of  knowing  a 
man  whom  we  have  met  and  spoken  to  a  dozen 
times,  while  it  would  never  occur  to  us  to  use 
the  word  of  a  man  whose  books  we  might  have 
read  a  dozen  times  and  yet  never  have  seen; 
though  as  matter  of  fact  we  know  the  latter's 
real  mind,  or  a  part  of  it,  while  we  may  only 
know  the  healthy  or  pathetic  face  of  the  former. 

If  we  make  writing  the  business  of  our  lives, 
it  will  be  necessary  to  give  up  many  things  for 
it,  things  which  are  held  to  be  the  prizes  of  the 
world — position,  station,  wealth — or,  rather, 
to  give  up  the  pursuit  of  these  things;  proba- 


188  The  Silent  Isle 

bly,  indeed,  if  we  really  love  our  art  we  shall 
be  glad  enough  to  give  up  what  we  do  not  care 
about  for  a  thing  about  which  we  do  care.  But 
there  will  be  other  things  to  be  given  up  as  well, 
which  we  may  not  like  resigning,  and  one  of 
these  things  is  the  multiplication  of  pleasant 
relations  with  other  people,  which  cannot  in- 
deed be  called  friendships,  but  which  rank 
high  among  the  easy  pleasures  of  life.  We 
must  give  them  up  because  they  mean  time,  and 
time  is  one  of  the  things  that  the  artist  cannct 
throw  away.  Of  course  the  artist  must  net 
lose  his  hold  on  life;  but  if  he  is  working  in  a 
reflective  medium,  it  is  his  friendships  that  help 
him,  and  not  his  acquaintances.  He  must  learn 
to  be  glad  to  be  alone,  for  it  is  in  solitude  that 
an  idea  works  itself  out,  very  often  quite  un- 
consciously, by  a  sort  of  secret  gestation. 
How  often  have  I  found  that  to  put  an  idea  in 
the  mind  and  to  leave  it  there,  even  if  one  does 
not  consciously  meditate  upon  it,  is  sufficient 
to  clothe  the  naked  thought  with  a  body  of 
appropriate  utterance,  when  it  comes  to  the 
birth.  But  casual  social  intercourse,  the  lan- 
guid interchange  of  conventional  talk,  mere 
gregariousness,  must  be  eschewed  by  an  artist, 
for  the  simple  reason  that  his  temptation  will 
be  to  expend  his  force  in  entering  into  closer 
relations  with  the  casual,  and  possibly  unin- 
telligent,   person    than    the    necessities    of   the 


The  Life  of  the  Artist         189 

situation  warrant.  The  artist  is  so  impatient  of 
dulness,  so  greedy  of  fineness,  in  all  his  relations, 
that  he  is  apt  to  subject  himself  to  a  wasteful 
strain  in  talking  to  unperceptive  and  unapprecia- 
tive  persons.  It  is  not  that  he  desires  to  appear 
brilliant;  it  is  that  he  is  so  intolerant  of  tedium 
that  he  sacrifices  himself  to  fatiguing  efforts  in 
trying  to  strike  a  spark  out  of  a  dull  stone. 
The  spark  is  perhaps  struck,  but  he  parts  with 
his  vital  force  in  striking  it.  He  will  be  apt  to  be 
reproached  with  being  eremitical,  self-absorbed, 
unsociable,  fastidious;  but  he  must  not  care 
for  that,  because  the  essence  of  his  work  is  to 
cultivate  relations  of  sympathy  with  people 
whose  faces  he  may  never  see,  and  he  must  save 
his  talk,  so  to  speak,  for  his  books.  With  his 
friends  it  is  different,  for  talking  to  congenial 
people  with  whom  one  is  familiar  is  a  process 
at  once  stimulating  and  tranquillising,  and  it 
is  at  such  moments  that  ideas  take  swift  and 
brilliant  shape. 

Those  who  may  read  these  words  will  be  apt 
to  think  that  it  is  a  selfish  business  after  all; 
yet  that  is  only  because  so  many  people  con- 
sider the  life  of  the  writer  an  otiose  and  un- 
necessary life;  but  the  sacrifices  of  which  I 
speak  are  only  those  that  all  men  who  follow 
an  absorbing  profession  have  to  make — bar- 
risters, politicians,  physicians,  men  of  business. 
No  one  complains  if  they  seclude  themselves  at 


190  The  Silent  Isle 

certain  hours.  Of  course,  if  a  writer  finds  that 
general  society  makes  no  demands  upon  his 
nervous  force,  but  is  simply  a  recreation, 
there  is  no  reason  why  he  should  not  take  that 
recreation;  though  I  have  known  men  who  just 
missed  being  great  writers  because  they  could 
not  resist  the  temptation  of  general  society. 

The  conclusion  of  the  matter  is  that  an  artist 
must  cultivate  a  strict  sense  of  responsibility; 
if  he  has  a  certain  thing  to  say,  he  must  say  it 
with  all  his  force ;  and  he  must  be  content  with 
a  secret  and  silent  influence,  an  impersonal 
brotherliness,  deep  and  inner  relations  of  soul 
with  soul,  that  may  never  express  themselves  in 
glance  or  gesture,  in  hand-clasp  or  smile,  but 
which,  for  all  that,  are  truer  and  more  perma- 
nent relations  than  word  or  gesture  or  close  em- 
brace can  give;  a  marriage  of  souls,  a  bodiless 
union. 


XXVII 

I  have  often  thought  that  in  Art,  judging 
by  the  analogy  of  previous  development,  we 
ought  to  be  able  to  prophesy  more  or  less  the 
direction  in  which  development  is  likely  to  take 
place.  I  mean  that  in  music,  for  instance,  the 
writers  of  the  stricter  ancient  music  might  have 
seen  that  the  art  was  likely  to  develop  a  greater 
intricacy  of  form,  an  increased  richness  of  har- 
mony, a  larger  use  of  discords,  suspensions, 
and  chromatic  intervals,  a  tendency  to  conceal 
superficial  form  rather  than  to  emphasise  it, 
and  so  forth.  Yet  it  is  a  curious  question 
whether  if  Handel,  say,  could  have  heard  an 
overture  of  Wagner's  he  would  have  thought  it 
an  advance  in  beauty  or  not — whether  it  would 
have  seemed  to  him  like  the  realisation  of  some 
incredible  dream,  a  heavenly  music,  or  whether 
he  would  have  thought  it  licentious,  and  even 
shapeless.  0-  course,  one  knows  that  there  is 
going  to  be  development  in  art,  but  the  imagina- 
tion is  unable  to  forecast  it,  except  in  so  far 
as  it  can  forecast  a  possibility  of  an  increased 
perfection  of   technique.      It  is  the  same  with 

191 


192  The  Silent  Isle 

painting.  It  is  a  bewildering  speculation  what 
Raffaelle  or  Michelangelo  would  have  thought 
of  the  work  of  Turner  or  Millais:  whether  they 
would  have  been  delighted  by  the  subtle  evolu- 
tion of  their  own  aims,  or  confused  by  the  in- 
crease of  impressional  suggestiveness — whether, 
indeed,  if  Raffaelle  or  Michelangelo  had  seen 
a  large  photograph,  say,  of  a  winter  scene,  or 
a  chromo-lithograph  such  as  appears  as  a 
supplement  to  an  illustrated  paper,  they  might 
not  have  flung  down  their  brushes  in  a  mixture 
of  rapture  and  despair. 

There  is  the  same  difficulty  when  we  come  to 
literature.  What  would  Chaucer  or  Spenser 
have  thought  of  Browning  or  Swinburne? 
Would  such  poetry  have  seemed  to  them  like 
an  inspired  product  of  art,  or  a  delirious  torrent 
of  unintelligible  verbiage?  Of  course,  they 
would  not  have  understood  the  language,  to 
begin  with;  and  the  thought,  the  interfusion 
of  philosophy,  the  new  problems,  would  have 
been  absolutely  incomprehensible.  Probably 
if  one  could  have  questioned  Spenser,  he  would 
have  felt  that  the  last  word  had  probably  been 
said  in  poetry,  and  would  not  have  been  able 
to  conceive  of  its  development  in  any  direction. 

The  great  genius  who  is  also  effective  is  gener- 
ally the  man  who  is  not  very  far  ahead  of  his 
age,  but  just  a  little  ahead  of  it — who  foresees 
not  the  remote  possibilities  of  artistic  develop- 


Development  in  Art  193 

ment,  but  just  the  increased  amount  of  colour 
and  quality  which  the  received  forms  can  bear, 
and  which  are  consequently  likely  to  be  ac- 
ceptable to  people  of  artistic  perceptions.  If 
a  Tennyson  had  lived  in  the  time  of  Pope,  he 
would  doubtless  have  used  the  heroic  couplet 
faithfully,  and  put  into  it  just  a  small  increase 
of  melody,  a  slightly  more  graceful  play  of 
thought,  a  finer  observation  of  natural  things — 
but  he  probably  would  not  have  strayed  beyond 
the  accepted  forms  of  art. 

Then  there  comes  in  a  new  and  interesting 
question  as  to  whether  it  is  possible  that  any 
new  species  of  art  will  be  developed,  or  whether 
all  the  forms  of  art  are  more  or  less  in  our  hands. 
It  is  possible  to  conceive  that  music  may  in  the 
future  desert  form  in  favour  of  colour;  it  is 
possible  to  conceive  that  painters  might  pro- 
duce pictures  of  pure  colour,  quite  apart  from 
any  imitation  of  natural  objects,  in  which 
colour  might  aspire  more  to  the  condition  of 
music,  and  modulate  from  tone  to  tone. 

In  literary  art,  the  movement  in  the  direc- 
tion of  realistic  art,  as  opposed  to  idealistic,  is 
the  most  marked  development  of  later  days. 
But  I  believe  that  there  is  still  a  further  pos- 
sibility of  development,  a  combination  of  prose 
and  poetry,  which  may  be  confidently  expected 
in  the  future. 

It  is  clear,  I  think,  that  the  old  instinct  which 
13 


194  The  Silent  Isle 

tended  to  make  a  division  between  poetry  and 
prose  is  being  gradually  obliterated.  The  rhyth- 
mical structure  of  poetry,  and  above  all  the  de- 
vice of  rhyme,  is  essentially  immature  and 
childish:  the  use  by  poets  of  rhythmical  beat 
and  verbal  assonance  is  simply  the  endeavour  to 
captivate  what  is  a  primeval  and  even  barbarous 
instinct.  The  pleasure  which  children  take  in 
beating  their  hands  upon  a  table,  in  rapping 
out  a  tattoo  with  a  stick,  in  putting  together 
unmeaning  structures  of  rhyme,  is  not  neces- 
sarily an  artistic  thing  at  all;  what  lies  at  the 
root  of  it  is  the  pleasure  of  the  conscious  per- 
ception of  similarity  and  regularity.  This 
same  tendency  is  to  be  seen  in  our  buildings,  in 
the  love  of  geometrical  forms,  so  that  the  ele- 
mentary perception  is  better  pleased  by  con- 
templating a  building  with  a  door  in  the  middle 
and  the  same  number  of  windows  on  each  side, 
than  in  contemplating  the  structure  of  a  tree. 
Uneducated  people  are  far  more  charmed  by 
the  appearance  of  a  rock  which  has  a  resem- 
blance to  something  else — a  human  face  or  an 
animal — than  by  a  beautifully  proportioned  and 
irregular  crag.  The  uncultivated  human  be- 
ing, again,  loves  geometrical  forms  in  nature, 
such  as  the  crystal  and  the  basalt  column,  or 
the  magnified  snowflake,  better  than  it  loves 
forms  of  lavish  wildness.  We  gather  about  our 
dwellings  flowers  which  please  by  their  sharply 


The  Poetry  of  the  Future      195 

defined  tint,  and  their  correspondence  of  petal 
with  petal;  and  yet  there  is  just  as  precisely- 
ordered  a  structure  in  natural  objects,  which 
appear  to  be  fortuitous  in  shape  and  outline, 
as  there  is  in  things  whose  outline  is  more 
strictly  geometrical.  The  laws  which  regulate 
the  shape  of  a  chalk  down  or  an  ivy  tendril 
are  just  as  severe  as  the  laws  which  regulate 
the  monkey-puzzle  tree  or  the  talc  crystal. 
My  own  belief  is  that  the  trained  artistic  sense 
is  probably  only  in  its  infancy,  and  that  it 
will  advance  upon  the  line  of  the  pleased 
apprehension  of  the  existence  of  less  obvious 
structure. 

If  we  apply  this  to  literature,  it  is  my  belief 
that  the  love  of  human  beings  for  the  stanza 
and  the  rhyme  is  probably  an  elementary 
thing,  like  the  love  of  the  crystal  and  the  flower- 
shape,  and  that  it  is  the  love  not  so  much  of  the 
beautiful  as  of  the  kind  of  effect  that  the  ob- 
server could  himself  produce.  The  child  feels 
that,  given  the  materials,  he  could  and  would 
make  shapes  like  crystals  and  flowers;  but  to 
make  things  of  more  elaborate  structure  would 
be  outside  his  power. 

To  confine  ourselves,  then,  to  one  single 
literary  effect,  it  appears  to  me  that  the  poetry  of 
the  future  will  probably  not  develop  very  much 
further  in  the  direction  of  metre  and  rhyme. 
Indeed,  it  is  possible  to  see,  not  to  travel  far  for 


196  The  Silent  Isle 

instances,  in  the  work  of  such  writers  as  Mr. 
Robert  Bridges  or  Mr.  Stephen  Phillips,  a 
tendency  to  write  lines  which  shall  conceal  as 
far  as  possible  their  rhythmical  beat.  It  is 
indeed  a  very  subtle  pleasure  to  perceive  the 
effect  of  lines  which  are  unmetrical  superficially 
but  which  yet  confine  themselves  to  a  fixed 
structure  below,  by  varying  the  stresses  and 
compensating  for  them.  It  is  possible,  though 
I  do  not  think  it  very  likely,  that  poetry  may 
develop  largely  in  this  direction.  I  do  not 
think  it  likely,  because  such  writing  is  intricate 
and  difficult,  and  ends  too  often  in  being  a 
mere  tour  de  force;  the  pleasure  arising  from 
the  discovery  that,  after  all,  the  old  simple 
structure  is  there,  though  strangely  disguised. 
I  think  it  more  probable  that  the  superficial 
structure  will  be  frankly  given  up.  If  we  con- 
sider what  rhyme  is,  and  what  detestable 
limitations  it  enforces  on  the  writer  for  the 
sake  of  gratifying  what  is,  after  all,  not  a  dig- 
nified pleasure,  the  only  wonder  is  that  such  a 
tradition  should  have  survived  so  long. 

What  I  rather  anticipate  is  the  growth  among 
our  writers  of  a  poetical  prose,  with  a  severe 
structure  and  sequence  of  thought  underlying 
it,  but  with  an  entire  irregularity  of  outline. 
The  pleasure  to  be  derived  from  perfectly  pro- 
portioned lucid  prose  is  a  far  subtler  and  more 
refined   pleasure   than   that   derived   from    the 


Poetical  Prose  197 

rhythmical  beat  of  verse.  Take,  for  instance, 
such  works  as  The  Ring  and  the  Book  and 
Aurora  Leigh.  Is  there  anything  whatever  to 
be  gained  by  the  relentless  drumming,  under 
the  surface  of  these  imaginative  narratives, 
of  the  stolid  blank  verse?  Would  not  such 
compositions  have  gained  by  being  written  in 
pure  poetical  prose?  The  quality  which  at 
present  directs  writers  to  choosing  verse- 
forms  for  poetical  expression,  apart  from  the 
traditions,  is  the  need  of  condensation,  and  the 
sense  of  proportion  which  the  verse-structure 
enforces  and  imparts.  But  I  should  look 
forwards  to  the  writing  of  prose  where  the 
epithets  should  be  as  diligently  weighed,  the 
cadence  as  sedulously  studied;  where  the  mood 
and  the  subject  would  indicate  inevitably 
the  form  of  the  sentence,  the  alternation  of 
languid,  mellifluous  streams  of  scented  and 
honied  words  with  brisk,  emphatic,  fiery  splashes 
of  language.  Indeed,  in  reading  even  great 
poetry,  is  one  not  sometimes  sadly  aware,  as 
in  the  case  of  Shelley  or  Swinburne,  that  the 
logical  sequence  of  thought  is  loose  and  inde- 
terminate, and  that  this  is  concealed  from 
one  by  the  reverberating  beat  of  metre,  which 
gives  a  false  sense  of  structure  to  a  mood  that 
is  really  invertebrate? 

What    I    am    daily    hoping    to    see    is    the 
rise  of  a  man  of  genius,  with  a  rich  poetical 


198  The  Silent  Isle 

vocabulary  and  a  deep  instinct  for  poetical 
material,  who  will  throw  aside  resolutely  all 
the  canons  of  verse,  and  construct  prose  lyrics 
with  a  perfect  mastery  of  cadence  and  melody. 

The  experiment  was  made  by  Walt  Whit- 
man, and  in  a  few  of  his  finest  lyrics,  such  as 
Out  of  the  Cradle  endlessly  rocking,  one  gets  the 
perfection  of  structure  and  form.  But  he 
spoilt  his  vehicle  by  a  careless  diffuseness,  by 
a  violent  categorical  tendency,  and  by  other 
faults  which  may  be  called  faults  of  breed- 
ing rather  than  faults  of  art — a  ghastly  volu- 
bility, an  indiscretion,  a  lust  for  description 
rather  than  suggestion;  and  thus  he  has  num- 
bered no  followers,  and  only  a  few  inconsider- 
able imitators. 

I  think,  too,  that  Whitman  was,  in  position, 
just  a  little  ahead,  as  I  have  indicated,  of  the 
taste  of  his  time ;  and  he  was  not  a  good  enough 
artist  to  enforce  the  beauty  and  the  possibilities 
of  his  experiment  upon  the  world. 

There  is,  moreover,  this  further  difficulty 
in  the  way  of  the  literary  experimentalist. 
Whitman,  in  virtue  of  his  strength,  his  vitality, 
his  perception,  his  individuality,  rather  blocks 
the  way;  it  is  difficult  to  avoid  imitating  him, 
though  it  is  easy  to  avoid  his  errors.  It  is 
difficult  in  such  poetry  not  to  apostrophise 
one's  subject  as  Whitman  did. 

It  may  be  asked,  in  what  is  this  poetical  prose 


Poetical  Prose  199 

to  differ  from  the  prose  of  great  artists  who 
have  written  melodious,  reflective,  essentially 
poetical  prose — the  prose  of  Lamb,  of  Ruskin, 
of  Pater?  The  answer  must  be  that  it  must 
differ  from  Lamb  in  sustained  intention,  from 
Ruskin  in  firmness  of  structure,  from  Pater  in 
variety  of  mood.  Such  prose  as  I  mean  must 
be  serious,  liquid,  profound.  It  must  probably 
eschew  all  broad  effects  of  humour;  it  must 
eschew  narrative;  it  must  be  in  its  essence 
lyrical,  an  outburst  like  the  song  of  the  lark  or 
the  voice  of  the  waterfall.  It  must  deal  with 
beauty,  not  only  the  beauty  of  natural  things, 
but  the  beauty  of  human  relations,  though  not 
trenching  upon  drama;  and,  above  all,  it  must 
take  into  itself  the  mystery  of  philosophical 
and  scientific  thought.  Science  and  philosophy 
are  deeply  and  essentially  poetical,  in  that  they 
are  attempts  to  build  bridges  into  the  abyss  of 
the  unknown.  The  work  of  the  new  lyrist  must 
be  to  see  in  things  and  emotions  the  quality 
of  beauty,  and  to  discern  and  express  the  magic 
quickening  thrill  that  creeps  like  a  flame  through 
the  material  form,  and  passes  out  beyond  the 
invisible  horizon,  leaping  from  star  to  star,  and 
from  the  furthest  star  into  the  depths  of  the 
ancient  environing  night. 


XXVIII 

A  few  days  ago  an  old  friend  of  mine,  who  has 
been  a  good  friend  to  me,  who  is  more  careful  of 
my  reputation  even  than  myself,  gave  me  some 
serious  advice.  He  said,  speaking  with  affec- 
tionate partiality,  that  I  had  considerable 
literary  gifts,  but  that  I  was  tending  to  devote 
myself  too  much  to  ephemeral  and  imaginative 
literature,  and  that  I  ought  to  take  up  a  task 
more  worthy  of  my  powers,  write  a  historical 
biography  such  as  a  Life  of  Canning,  or  pro- 
duce a  complete  annotated  edition  of  the  works 
of  Pope,  with  a  biography  and  appendices. 
I  assured  him  that  I  had  no  talents  for  re- 
search, and  insufficient  knowledge  for  a  his- 
torical biography.  He  replied  that  research 
was  a  matter  of  patience,  and  that  as  for  know- 
ledge, I  could  acquire  it. 

I  thanked  him  sincerely  for  his  thoughtful 
kindness,  and  said  that  I  would  bear  it  in  mind. 

The  result  of  my  reflections  is  that  the  only 
kind  of  literature  worth  writing  is  literature 
with  some  original  intention.  Solid  works 
have  a  melancholy  tendency  to  be  monumental, 

200 


Self-Limitation  201 

in  the  sense  that  they  cover  the  graves  of  literary- 
reputations.  Historical  works  are  superseded 
with  shocking  rapidity.  One  remembers  the 
description  which  FitzGerald  gave  of  the 
labours  of  his  friend  Spedding  upon  Bacon. 
Spedding  gave  up  the  whole  of  his  life,  said 
FitzGerald,  to  editing  works  which  did  not 
need  editing,  and  to  whitewashing  a  character 
which  could  not  be  whitewashed.  It  is  awful 
to  reflect  how  many  years  Walter  Scott  gave 
to  editing  Dryden  and  Swift  and  to  writing 
a  Life  of  Napoleon — years  which  might  have 
given  us  more  novels  and  poems.  Did  Scott, 
did  any  one,  gain  by  the  sacrifice?  Of  course 
one  would  like  to  write  a  great  biography,  but 
the  biographies  that  live  are  the  lives  of  men 
written  by  friends  and  contemporaries,  living 
portraits,  like  Boswell's  Johnson  or  Stanley's 
Arnold.  To  write  such  a  book,  one  needs  to 
have  been  in  constant  intercourse  with  a  great 
personality,  to  have  seen  him  in  success  and 
failure,  in  happiness  and  depression,  in  health 
and  sickness,  in  strength  and  weakness.  Such 
an  opportunity  is  given  to  few. 

Of  course,  if  one  has  a  power  of  wide  and 
accurate  historical  survey,  a  trustworthy  mem- 
ory, a  power  of  vitalising  the  past,  one  may  well 
give  one's  life  to  producing  a  wise  and  judicious 
historical  work.  But  here  a  man  must  learn 
his  limitations,  and  one  can  only  deal  success- 


202  The  Silent  Isle 

fully  with  congenial  knowledge.  I  have  my- 
self a  very  erratic  and  unbusinesslike  mind. 
There  are  certain  things,  like  picturesque  per- 
sonal traits,  landscape,  small  details  of  life 
and  temperament,  that  lodge  themselves  firmly 
in  my  mind;  but  when  I  am  dealing  with  his- 
torical facts  and  erudite  matters,  though  I  can 
get  up  my  case  and  present  it  for  the  time  being 
with  a  certain  cogency,  the  knowledge  all  melts 
in  my  mind;  and  no  one  ought  to  think  of 
attempting  historical  work  unless  his  mind 
is  of  the  kind  that  can  hold  an  immense  amount 
of  knowledge  in  solution.  I  have  a  friend,  for 
instance,  who  can  put  all  kinds  of  details 
into  his  mind — he  has  an  insatiable  appetite 
for  them — and  produce  them  again  years  after- 
wards as  sharp  and  definite  in  outline  as  when 
he  put  them  away.  His  mind  is,  in  fact,  a 
great  spacious  and  roomy  warehouse,  where 
things  are  kept  dry  and  in  excellent  order. 
But  with  myself  it  is  quite  different.  To  store 
knowledge  of  an  uncongenial  kind  in  my  own 
mind  is  just  as  though  I  put  away  a  heap  of 
snowballs.  In  a  day  or  two  their  outline  is 
blurred  and  blunted ;  in  a  few  months  they  have 
melted  away  and  run  down  the  gutters.  So 
much  for  historical  work. 

Then  there  comes  the  question  of  editorial 
work:  and  here  again  I  have  the  greatest 
admiration  for  men  like  Dr.  Birkbeck  Hill  or 


Self-Limitation  203 

Professor  Masson,  who  will  devote  a  lifetime 
to  patiently  amassing  all  the  facts  that  can  be 
gleaned  about  some  great  personality.  But 
this  again  requires  a  mind  of  a  certain  order, 
and  there  is  no  greater  mistake  in  literary 
work  than  to  misjudge  the  quality  and  force 
of  one's  mind. 

My  own  work,  I  am  certain,  must  be  of  a 
literary  kind ;  and  when  one  goes  a  little  further 
back  and  asks  oneself  what  it  is  that  makes 
great  personalities,  like  Milton  or  Dr.  Johnson, 
worth  spending  all  this  labour  about,  why  one 
cares  to  know  about  their  changes  of  lodgings 
and  their  petty  disbursements,  it  is,  after  all, 
because  they  are  great  personalities,  and 
have  displayed  their  greatness  in  imaginative 
writings  or  in  uttering  fertile  and  inspiring 
conversational  dicta.  Imagine  what  one's  re- 
sponsibility would  have  been  if  one  could 
have  persuaded  Charles  Lamb  to  have  taken 
up  the  task  of  editing  the  works  of  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher,  and  to  have  deserted  his  ephemeral 
contributions  to  literature.  Or  if  one  could 
have  induced  Shelley  to  give  up  writing  his 
wild  lyrics,  and  devote  himself  to  composing 
a  work  on  Political  Justice.  Jowett,  who  had 
a  great  fancy  for  imposing  uncongenial  tasks 
on  his  friends,  is  recorded  to  have  said  that 
Swinburne  was  a  very  brilliant  young  man 
but  that  he  would  never  do  anything  till  he 


204  The  Silent  Isle 

had  given  up  wasting  his  time  in  poetry.  Im- 
agine the  result  if  Jowett  had  had  his  way! 

Of  course,  it  all  depends  upon  what  one  de- 
sires to  achieve  and  the  sort  of  success  one  sets 
before  oneself.  If  one  is  enamoured  of  academi- 
cal posts  or  honorary  degrees,  why,  one  must 
devote  oneself  to  research  and  be  content  to  be 
read  by  specialists.  That  is  a  legitimate  and 
even  admirable  ambition — admirable  all  the 
more  because  it  brings  a  man  a  slender  reputa- 
tion and  very  little  of  the  wealth  which  the 
popular  writer  hauls  in. 

The  things  which  live  in  literature,  the 
books  which  make  a  man  worth  editing  a 
century  or  two  after  he  is  dead,  are,  after  all, 
the  creative  and  imaginative  books.  It  is  not 
in  the  hope  of  being  edited  that  imaginative 
authors  write.  Milton  did  not  compose  L' Al- 
legro in  the  spirit  of  desiring  that  it  might  be 
admirably  annotated  by  a  Scotch  professor. 
Keats  did  not  write  La  Belle  Dame  sans  Merci 
in  order  that  it  might  be  printed  in  a  school 
edition,  with  a  little  biography  dealing  with  the 
paternal  livery-stable.  It  may  be  doubted 
whether  any  very  vital  imaginative  work  is 
ever  produced  with  a  view  to  its  effect  even 
upon  its  immediate  readers.  A  great  novelist 
does  not  write  with  a  moral  purpose,  and  still 
less  with  an  intellectual  purpose.  He  sees 
the  thing  like  a  picture;  the  personalities  move, 


The  Artistic  Life  205 

mingle,  affect  each  other,  appear,  vanish,  and 
he  is  haunted  by  the  desire  to  give  permanence 
to  the  scene.  For  the  time  being  he  is  under 
the  thrall  of  a  strong  desire  to  make  something 
musical,  beautiful,  true,  life-like.  It  is  a  critic- 
ism of  life  that  all  writers,  from  the  highest 
to  the  humblest,  aim  at.  They  are  amazed, 
thrilled,  enchanted  by  the  sight  and  the  scene, 
by  the  relationships  and  personalities  they  see 
round  them.  These  they  must  depict;  and 
in  a  life  where  so  much  is  fleeting,  they  must 
seek  to  stamp  the  impression  in  some  lasting 
medium.  It  is  the  beauty  and  strangeness  of 
life  that  overpowers  the  artist.  He  has  little 
time  to  devote  himself  to  things  of  a  different 
value,  to  the  getting  of  position  or  influence  or 
wealth.  He  cannot  give  himself  up  to  filling 
his  leisure  pleasantly,  by  society  or  amuse- 
ment. These  are  but  things  to  fill  a  vacant 
space  of  weariness  or  of  gestation.  For  him 
the  one  important  thing  is  the  shock,  the  sur- 
prise, the  delight,  the  wonder  of  a  thousand 
impressions  on  his  perceptive  personality.  And 
his  success,  his  effect,  his  range,  depend  upon  the 
uniqueness  of  his  personality  in  part,  and  in  part 
upon  his  power  of  expressing  that  personality. 

Of  course,  there  are  natures  whose  percep- 
tiveness  outruns  their  power  of  expression — 
and  these  are,  as  a  rule,  the  dissatisfied, 
unhappy    temperaments   that  one  encounters; 


2o6  The  Silent  Isle 

there  are  others  whose  power  of  expression 
outruns  their  perceptiveness,  and  these  are 
facile,  fluent,  empty,  agreeable  writers. 

There  are  some  who  attain,  after  infinite 
delays,  a  due  power  of  expression,  and  these 
are  often  the  happiest  of  all  writers,  because 
they  have  the  sense  of  successful  effort.  And 
then,  lastly,  there  are  a  divine  few,  like  Shake- 
speare, in  whom  both  the  perception  and  the 
power  of  expression  seem  limitless. 

But  if  a  man  has  once  embraced  the  artistic 
ideal,  he  must  embark  upon  what  is  the  most 
terrible  of  all  risks.  There  is  a  small  chance 
that  he  may  find  his  exact  subject  and  his 
exact  medium,  and  that  the  subject  may  be  one 
which  is  of  a  widespread  interest.  But  there 
are  innumerable  chances  against  him.  Either 
the  fibre  of  his  mind  is  commonplace;  or  he  is 
born  out  of  his  due  time,  when  men  are  not 
interested  in  what  are  his  chief  preoccupations; 
or  he  may  miss  his  subject;  or  he  may  be  stiff, 
ungainly,  puerile  in  expression. 

All  of  these  are  our  literary  failures,  and  life 
is  likely  to  be  for  them  a  bitter  business.  I  am 
speaking,  of  course,  of  men  who  embrace  the 
matter  seriously;  and  the  misery  of  their 
position  is  that  they  will  be  confounded  with 
the  dilettantes  and  amateurs  who  take  up 
literature  as  a  fancy  or  as  a  hobby,  or  for 
even  less  worthy  motives. 


The  Artistic  Ideal  207 

A  man  such  as  I  have  described,  who  has  the 
passion  for  authorship,  and  who  fails  in  the 
due  combination  of  gifts,  must  face  the  possi- 
bility of  being  regarded  as  a  worse  than  useless 
being;  as  unpractical,  childish,  slipshod,  silly, 
worth  no  one's  attention.  He  is  happy,  how- 
ever, if  he  can  find  a  solace  in  his  own  work, 
and  if  he  is  sustained  by  a  hopefulness  that 
makes  light  of  results,  if  he  finds  pleasure  in 
the  mere  doing  of  unrecognised  work. 

And  thus,  in  my  own  case,  I  have  no  choice. 
I  must  perfect  my  medium  as  far  as  I  can,  and  I 
must  look  diligently  for  a  congenial  subject. 
I  must  not  allow  myself  to  be  discouraged  by 
advice,  however  kindly  and  well-intentioned,  to 
devote  myself  to  some  more  dignified  task. 
For  if  I  can  but  see  the  truth,  and  say  it  per- 
fectly, these  writings,  which  it  is  so  easy  to  call 
ephemeral,  will  become  vital  and  enriching. 
It  is  not  the  subject  that  gives  dignity;  it  is  not 
wholly  the  treatment  either ;  it  is  a  sort  of  fortu- 
nate union  of  the  two,  the  temperament  of  the 
writer  exactly  fitting  the  mould  of  his  subject — 
no  less  and  no  more. 

In  saying  this  I  am  not  claiming  to  be  a  Walter 
Scott  or  a  Charles  Lamb.  But  I  can  imagine  a 
friend  of  the  latter  imploring  him  not  to  waste 
his  time,  with  his  critical  gifts,  upon  writing 
slender,  trifling  essays;  and  I  maintain  that  if 
Charles    Lamb    knew    that    such    essays    were 


208  The  Silent  Isle 

the  work  that  he  did  best,  with  ease  and  delight, 
he  had  the  right  to  rebuff  the  hand  that  held 
out  a  volume  of  Marlowe  and  begged  him  to 
annotate  it.  What  spoils  our  hold  on  life  for 
so  many  of  us  is  this  false  sense  of  conventional 
dignity.  In  art  there  is  no  great  and  small. 
Whatever  a  mind  can  conceive  clearly  and 
express  beautifully,  that  is  good  art,  whether 
it  be  a  harrowing  tragedy  in  which  murders 
and  adulteries  cluster  as  thick  as  flies,  or  the 
shaking  of  a  reed  in  a  stream  as  the  current 
plucks  it  softly  from  below.  If  a  man  can 
communicate  to  others  his  amazed  bewilder- 
ment in  the  presence  of  the  tragedy,  or  his 
exquisite  delight  in  the  form  and  texture  and 
motion  of  the  reed,  he  is  an  artist.  Of  course, 
there  will  always  be  more  people  who  will  be 
affected  by  a  melodrama,  by  strange  and  ghastly 
events,  by  the  extremes  of  horror  and  pathos, 
than  will  be  affected  by  the  delicate  grace  of 
familiar  things — the  tastes  of  the  multitude 
are  coarse  and  immature.  But  a  man  must 
not  measure  his  success  by  the  range  of  his 
audience,  though  the  largest  art  will  appeal  to 
the  widest  circle.  Art  can  be  great  and  perfect 
without  being  large  and  surprising.  And  thus 
the  function  of  the  artist  is  to  determine  what 
he  can  see  clearly  and  perfectly,  and  to  take 
that  as  his  subject.  It  may  be  to  build  a  ca- 
thedral or  to  engrave  a  gem;  but  the  art  will 


The  Artist's  Quest  209 

be  great  in  proportion  as  he  sees  his  end  with 
absolute  distinctness,  and  loves  the    detail  of 
the  labour  that   makes  the  execution  flawless 
and  perfect.     The  artist,  if  he  would  prevail, 
must  not  be  seduced  by  any  temptation,  any 
extraneous   desire,   any  peevish  criticism,   any 
well-meant  rebuke,  into  trying  a  subject  that 
he  knows  is  too  large  for  him.     He  must  be 
his  own  severest  critic.     No  artistic  effort  can 
be  effective,   if  it  is  a  joyless  straining  after 
things  falteringly  grasped.     Joy  is  the  essential 
quality;   it  need  not  always   be  a   present,   a 
momentary    joy.      There    are    weary    spaces, 
as  when  a  footsore  traveller  plods  along  the 
interminable  road  that  leads  him  to  the  city 
where  he  would  be.     But  he  must  know  in 
his  heart  that  the  joy  of  arrival  will  outweigh 
all  the  dreariness  of  the  road,  and  he  must, 
above  all  things,  mean  to  arrive.     If  at  any 
moment  the  artist  feels  that  he  is  not  making 
way,  and  doubts  whether  the  object  of  his  quest 
is  really  worth  the  trouble,  then  he  had  better 
abandon  the  quest;  unless,  indeed,  he  has  some 
moral  motive,  apart  from  the  artistic  motive, 
in  continuing  it.     For  the  end  of  art  is  delight 
and  the  quickening  of  the  pulse  of  emotion; 
and  delight  cannot  be  imparted  by  one  who 
is  weary  of  the  aim,  and  the  pulse  cannot  be 
quickened  by  one  whose  heart  is  failing  him. 
There  may,  as  I  say,  be  moral  reasons  for  per- 
14 


210  The  Silent  Isle 

severance,  and  if  a  man  feels  that  it  is  his  duty 
to  complete  a  work  when  his  artistic  impulse 
has  failed  him,  he  had  better  do  it.  But  he 
must  have  no  delusions  in  the  matter.  He  must 
not  comfort  himself  with  the  false  hope  that  it 
may  turn  out  to  be  a  work  of  art  after  all. 
His  biographer  draws  a  terrible  picture  of  Flau- 
bert pacing  in  his  room,  flinging  himself  upon 
his  couch,  rising  to  pace  again,  an  agonised  and 
tortured  medium,  in  the  search  of  the  one 
perfect  word.  But  the  misery  was  worth  it  if 
the  word  was  found,  and  the  fierce  faint  joy  of 
discovery  was  worth  all  the  ease  and  serenity  of 
declining  upon  the  word  that  sufficed,  instead 
of  straining  after  the  word  required. 


XXIX 

We  artists  who  try  to  discern  beauty,  and  en- 
deavour to  rule  our  lives  to  be  as  tranquil,  as 
perceptive,  as  joyful  as  possible,  are  apt  to  be 
too  impatient  of  the  petty,  mean,  and  sordid 
things  with  which  the  fabric  of  life  is  so  much 
interwoven — the  ugly  words  of  spiteful  people, 
little  fretting  ailments,  unsympathetic  criti- 
cisms, coldness  and  indifference,  tiresome  busi- 
ness, wearisome  persons.  It  is  a  deep-seated 
mistake.  We  cannot  cast  these  things  away 
as  mere  debris.  They  must  be  used,  applied, 
accommodated.  These  are  our  materials,  which 
we  must  strive  to  combine  and  adapt.  To  be 
disgusted  with  them,  to  allow  them  to  disturb 
our  serenity,  is  as  though  a  painter  should  sicken 
at  the  odour  of  his  pigments  and  the  offscour- 
ings of  his  palette.  The  truer  economy  is  to 
exclude  all  such  elements  as  we  can,  consistently 
with  honour,  tenderness,  and  courage.  Then 
we  must  not  be  dismayed  with  what  remains; 
we  must  suffer  it  quietly  and  hopefully,  letting 
patience  have  her  perfect  work.  After  all,  it 
is  from  the  soul   of  the  artist  that   his  work 

211 


212  The  Silent  Isle 

arises;  and  it  is  through  these  goads  and  stings, 
through  pain  and  weariness  joyfully  embraced, 
that  the  soul  wins  strength  and  subtlety.  They 
are  as  the  implements  which  cleave  and  break 
up  the  idle  fallow,  and  without  their  work  there 
can  be  no  prodigal  or  generous  sowing. 

I  suppose  that  I  put  into  my  observation  of 
Nature — and  perhaps  into  my  hearing  of  music 
— the  same  thing  that  many  people  experience 
only  in  their  relations  with  other  people.  To 
myself  relations  with  others  are  cheerful  enough, 
interesting,  perplexing — but  seldom  absorb- 
ing, or  overwhelming;  such  experiences  never 
seem  to  say  the  ultimate  word  or  to  sound  the 
deeper  depth.  I  suppose  that  this  is  the  defi- 
ciency of  the  artistic  temperament.  I  write 
looking  out  upon  a  pale  wintry  sunset.  There, 
at  least,  is  something  deeper  than  myself. 
I  do  not  suppose  that  the  strange  pageant  of 
clouds  and  burning  light,  above  the  leafless 
grove,  the  bare  fields,  is  set  there  for  my  de- 
light. But  that  I  should  feel  its  inexpressible 
holiness,  its  solemn  mystery — feel  it  with  a 
sense  of  pure  tranquillity,  of  satisfied  desire — 
is  to  me  the  sign  that  it  holds  some  sacred 
secret  for  me.  I  suppose  that  other  men  have 
the  same  sense  of  sacredness  and  mystery  about 
love  and  friendship.  They  are  deep  and  beauti- 
ful things  for  me,  but  they  are  things  seen  by 
the  way,  and  not  waiting  for  me  at  the  end  of 


Limits  of  Temperament       213 

my  pilgrimage.  Music  holds  within  it  the  same 
sort  of  hidden  influence  as  the  beauty  of  nature. 
It  is  not  so  with  pictorial  art,  or  even  with 
writing,  because  the  personality,  the  imper- 
fections, of  the  artist  come  in  between  me  and 
the  thought.  One  cannot  make  the  pigments 
and  the  words  say  what  one  means.  Even  in 
music,  the  art  sometimes  comes  between  one 
and  the  thing  signified.  But  the  plain,  sweet, 
strong  chords  themselves  bring  the  fulness  of 
joy,  just  as  these  broken  lights  and  ragged 
veils  of  cloud  do.  I  remember  once  going  to 
dine  at  the  house  of  a  great  musician;  I  was  a 
minute  or  two  before  the  time,  and  I  found 
him  sitting  in  his  room  at  a  grand  piano,  play- 
ing the  last  cadence  of  some  simple  piece, 
unknown  to  me.  He  made  no  sign  of  recogni- 
tion; he  just  finished  the  strain;  a  lesser  man 
would  have  put  the  sense  of  hospitality  first, 
and  would  have  leapt  up  in  the  midst  of  an 
unfinished  chord.  But  not  till  the  last  echo 
of  the  last  chord  died  away  did  he  rise  to  re- 
ceive me.  I  felt  that  he  was  thus  obeying  a 
finer  and  truer  instinct  than  if  he  had  made  haste 
to  end. 

Every  one  must  find  out  for  himself  what  are 
the  holiest  and  most  permanent  things  in  life, 
and  worship  them  sincerely  and  steadfastly, 
allowing  no  conventionality,  no  sense  of  social 
duty,   to  come  in  between  him  and  his  pure 


214  The  Silent  Isle 

apprehension.  Thus,  and  thus  only,  can  a  man 
tread  the  path  among  the  stars.  Thus  it  is,  I 
think,  that  religious  persons,  like  artists,  arrive 
at  a  certain  detachment  from  human  affections 
and  human  aims,  which  is  surprising  and  even 
distressing  to  men  whose  hearts  are  more  knit 
to  the  things  of  earth.  Those  who  see  in  the 
dearest  and  most  intimate  of  human  relations, 
the  purest  and  highest  gift  of  God,  will  watch 
with  a  species  of  terror,  and  even  repulsion,  the 
aloofness,  the  solitariness  of  the  mystic  and  the 
artist.  It  will  seem  to  them  a  sort  of  chilly 
isolation,  an  inhuman,  even  a  selfish  thing; 
just  as  the  mystic  and  the  artist  will  see  in  the 
normal  life  of  men  a  thing  fettered  and  bound 
with  sad  and  small  chains.  It  is  impossible  to 
say  which  is  the  higher  life — no  dogmatism  is 
possible — all  depends  upon  the  quality  of  the 
emotion;  it  is  the  intensity  of  the  feeling  rather 
than  its  nature  that  matters.  The  impas- 
sioned lover  of  human  relations  is  a  finer  being 
than  the  unimpassioned  artist,  just  as  the  im- 
passioned artist  is  a  finer  being  than  the  man 
who  loves  sensually  and  materialistically.  All 
depends  upon  whether  the  love,  whatever  it  be 
— the  love  of  nature  or  of  art,  of  things  spiritual 
or  divine,  the  love  of  humanity,  the  sense  of 
brotherly  companionship — leads  on  to  some- 
thing unfulfilled  and  high,  or  whether  it  is 
satisfied.     If   our   desire   is    satisfied,    we   fail; 


Love  Unsatisfied  215 

if  it  is  for  ever  unsatisfied,  we  are  on  the  right 
path,  though  it  leads  us  none  can  tell  whither, 
to  wildernesses  or  paradises,  to  weltering  seas 
or  to  viewless  wastes  of  air.  If  the  artist  rests 
upon  beauty  itself,  if  the  mystic  lingers  among 
his  ecstasies,  they  have  deserted  the  pilgrim's 
path,  and  must  begin  the  journey  over  again 
in  weariness  and  in  tears.  But  if  they  walk 
earnestly,  not  knowing  what  the  end  may  be, 
never  mistaking  the  delight  of  the  moment  for 
the  joy  that  shines  and  glows  beyond  the 
furthest  horizon,  then  they  are  of  the  happy 
number  who  have  embraced  the  true  quest. 
Such  a  faith  will  give  them  a  patient  and  beauti- 
ful kindliness,  a  deep  affection  for  fellow- 
pilgrims,  and,  most  of  all,  for  those  in  whose 
eyes  and  lips  they  can  discern  the  wistful  desire 
to  see  behind  the  shadows  of  mortal  things. 
But  the  end  will  be  beyond  even  the  supreme 
moment  of  love's  abandonment,  beyond  the 
fairest  sights  of  earth,  beyond  the  sweetest 
music  of  word  or  chord.  And  we  must,  above 
all  things,  forbear  to  judge  another,  to  ques- 
tion other  motives,  to  contemn  other  aims; 
for  we  shall  feel  that  for  each  a  different  path  is 
prepared.  And  we  shall  forbear,  too,  to  press 
the  motives  that  seem  to  us  the  fairest  upon 
other  hearts.  We  must  give  them  utterance 
as  faithfully  as  we  can,  for  they  may  be  a  step 
in  another's  progress.     But  the  thought  of  in- 


216  The  Silent  Isle 

terfering  with  the  design  of  God  will  be  impious, 
insupportable.  Our  only  method  will  be  a 
perfect  sincerity,  which  will  indeed  lead  us  to 
refrain  from  any  attempt  to  overbalance  or  to 
divert  ingenuous  minds  from  their  own  chosen 
path.  To  accuse  our  fellow-men  of  stupidity 
or  of  prejudice  is  but  to  blaspheme  God. 


XXX 

What,  after  all,  is  the  essence  of  the  artistic 
life,  the  artist's  ideal?  I  think  the  reason 
why  it  is  so  often  misconceived  and  misunder- 
stood is  because  of  the  fact  that  it  is  a  narrow 
path  and  is  followed  whole-heartedly  by  few. 
Moreover,  in  England  at  the  present  time, 
when  we  are  all  so  tolerant  and  imagine  our- 
selves to  be  permeated  by  intelligent  sympathy 
with  ideas,  there  seem  to  me  to  be  hardly  any 
people  who  comprehend  this  point  of  view  at 
all.  There  is  a  good  deal  of  interest  in  England 
in  moral  ideals,  though  even  much  of  that  is 
of  a  Puritan  and  commercial  type.  The  God 
that  we  ignorantly  worship  is  Success,  and  our 
interest  in  moral  ideas  is  mainly  confined  to  our 
interest  in  what  is  successful.  We  are  not 
in  love  with  beautiful,  impracticable  visions 
at  all;  we  measure  a  man's  moral  intensity  by 
the  extent  to  which  he  makes  people  respect- 
able and  prosperous.  We  believe  in  an  educator 
when  he  makes  his  boys  do  their  work  and  play 
their  games;  in  a  priest,  when  he  makes  people 
join  clubs,  find  regular  employment,   give  up 

217 


218  The  Silent  Isle 

alcohol.  We  believe  in  a  statesman  when  he 
makes  a  nation  wealthy  and  contented.  We 
have  no  intellectual  ideals,  no  ideals  of  beauty. 
Our  idea  of  poetry  is  that  people  should  fall  in 
love,  and  our  idea  of  art  is  the  depicting  of 
rather  obvious  allegories.  These  things  are 
good  in  their  way,  but  they  are  very  elementary. 
Our  men  of  intellect  become  scientific  research- 
ers, historians,  erudite  persons.  How  few  living 
writers  there  are  who  unite  intellect  with 
emotion!  The  truth  is  that  we  do  not  believe 
in  emotion;  we  think  it  a  thing  to  play  with,  a 
thing  to  grow  out  of,  not  a  thing  to  live  by. 
If  a  person  discourses  or  writes  of  his  feelings 
we  think  him  a  sentimentalist,  and  have  an 
uneasy  suspicion  that  he  is  violating  the  canons 
of  good  taste.  The  result  is  that  we  are  a 
sensible,  a  good-humoured,  and  a  vulgar  nation. 
When  we  are  dealing  with  art,  we  have  no 
respect  for  any  but  successful  artists.  If 
the  practice  of  art  results  in  fame  and  money, 
we  praise  the  artist  in  a  patronising  way; 
when  the  artist  prophesies,  we  think  him  slightly 
absurd  until  he  commands  a  hearing,  and  then 
we  worship  him,  because  his  prophecies  have  a 
wide  circulation.  If  the  artist  is  unsuccessful, 
we  consider  him  a  mere  dilettante.  Then,  too, 
art  suffers  grievously  from  having  been  annexed 
by  moralists,  who  talk  about  art  as  the  hand- 
maid of  religion,  and  praise  the  artist  if  he  pro- 


The  End  of  Art  219 

vides  incentives  for  conduct  of  a  commercial 
type.  It  would  be  better  for  art  if  it  were 
frankly  snubbed  rather  than  thus  unctuously 
encouraged.  We  look  upon  it  all  as  a  matter  of 
influence,  for  the  one  thing  that  we  desire  is  to 
be  felt  to  affect  other  people,  to  inspire  action. 
The  one  thing  that  we  cannot  tolerate  is  that  a 
man  should  despise  and  withdraw  from  the 
busy  conventional  world.  If  he  ends  by  im- 
pressing the  world  we  admire  him,  and  people 
his  solitude  with  ugly  motives.  The  fact  is 
that  there  was  never  a  more  unpromising  soil 
for  artists  than  this  commonplace,  active, 
strenuous  century  in  which  we  live.  The 
temptations  we  put  in  the  artist's  way  are 
terribly  strong;  when  we  have  done  our  work, 
we  like  to  be  amused  by  books  and  plays  and 
pictures,  and  we  are  ready  to  pay  high  prices 
to  the  people  who  can  give  our  heavy  souls 
small  sensations  of  joy  and  terror  and  sorrow. 
And  wealth  is  a  fierce  temptation  to  the  artist, 
because  it  gives  him  liberty,  freedom  of  motion, 
comfort,  things  of  beauty  and  consideration. 
The  result  is  that  too  many  of  the  artists  who 
appear  among  us  fall  victims  to  the  temptations 
of  the  world,  and'  become  a  kind  of  superior 
parasite  and  prostitute,  believing  in  their 
dignity  because  they  are  not  openly  humiliated. 
But  the  true  artist,  like  the  true  priest,  cares 
only  for  the  beautiful  quality  of  the  thought 


220  The  Silent  Isle 

that  he  pursues.  The  true  priest  is  the  man 
who  loves  virtue,  disinterestedness,  truth,  and 
purity  with  a  kind  of  passion,  and  only  desires 
to  feed  the  same  love  in  faithful  hearts.  He 
seeks  the  Kingdom  of  God  first ;  and  if  the  good 
things  of  the  world  are  strewn,  as  they  are  apt 
to  be  strewn,  in  the  path  of  the  virtuous  person, 
he  is  never  for  a  moment  seduced  into  believing 
that  they  are  the  object  of  his  search.  His 
desire  is  that  souls  should  glow  and  thrill 
with  high,  sacred,  and  tender  emotions,  which 
are  their  own  surpassing  reward. 

So,  too,  the  artist  is  concerned  solely  with  the 
beautiful  thing — whether  it  is  the  beauty  of 
the  eager  relationships  of  men  and  women,  or 
the  ever-changing  exquisite  forms  and  colours 
of  nature,  or  the  effect  of  all  these  things  upon 
the  desirous  soul  of  man.  And  it  is  here  that 
his  danger  lies,  that  he  may  grow  to  be  pre- 
occupied with  the  changing  and  blended  tex- 
ture of  his  own  soul,  into  which  flow  so  many 
sweet  influences  and  gracious  visions — if,  like 
the  Lady  of  Shalott,  he  grows  to  think  of  the 
live  things  that  move  on  the  river-side  only  as 
objects  that  may  minister  to  the  richness  of 
the  web  that  he  weaves.  He  must  keep  his  eye 
intent  upon  the  power,  whatever  it  may  be, 
that  is  behind  all  these  gracious  manifestations; 
they  must  all  be  symbols  to  him  of  some  un- 
revealed  mystery,  or  he  will  grow  to  love  the 


The  True  Vision  221 

gem  for  its  colour,  the  flower  for  its  form,  the 
cloud  for  its  whiteness  or  empurpled  gloom, 
the  far-off  hill  for  its  azure  tints,  and  so  forget  to 
discern  the  spirit  that  thus  gleams  and  flashes 
from  its  shrouding  vapours. 

And  then,  too,  in  art  as  in  love,  the  artist 
must  lose  himself  that  he  may  find  himself. 
If  he  considers  all  things  in  relation  to  his  own 
sensitive  and  perceptive  temperament,  he  will 
become  immured  in  a  chilly  egotism,  a  narrow 
selfishness,  from  which  he  will  not  dare  to  emerge. 
He  must  fling  himself  whole-heartedly  into  a 
passionate  worship  of  what  is  beautiful,  not  de- 
siring it  only  that  it  may  thrill  and  satisfy  him, 
but  longing  to  draw  near  to  its  innermost  es- 
sence. The  artist  may  know,  indeed,  that  he 
is  following  the  wrong  path  when  he  loves 
the  artistic  presentation  of  a  thing  better  than 
the  thing  presented,  when  he  is  moved  more 
by  a  single  picture  of  a  perfect  scene  than  by 
the  ten  thousand  lovely  things  which  he  may 
see  in  a  single  country  walk.  He  must,  indeed, 
select  emotions  and  beautiful  objects  by  their 
quality;  he  must  compare  and  distinguish; 
but  if  he  once  believes  that  his  concern  is  with 
representation  rather  than  with  life,  he  goes 
downward.  He  must  not  be  concerned  for  a 
single  instant  with  the  thought,  "How  will 
this  that  I  perceive  affect  others  as  I  represent 
it?"  but  he  must  rather  be  so  amazed  and  carried 


222  The  Silent  Isle 

out  of  himself  by  the  beauty  of  what  he  sees, 
that  the  representing  of  it  is  only  a  neces- 
sary consequence  of  the  vision;  as  a  child  may 
tell  an  adventure  breathlessly  and  intently 
to  its  mother  or  its  nurse,  absorbed  in  the 
recollection. 

And  thus  the  true  artist  will  not  weigh  and 
ponder  the  most  effective  medium  for  his 
expression;  the  thought  must  be  so  overpower- 
ing that  the  choice  of  a  medium  will  be  a  matter 
of  pure  instinct.  The  most,  indeed,  of  what  he 
feels  and  perceives  he  will  recognise  to  be  frankly 
untranslatable  in  speech  or  pigment  or  musical 
notes,  too  high,  too  sacred,  too  sublime.  His 
work  will  be  no  more  selfish  than  the  work  of 
the  pilot  or  the  general  is  selfish.  The  re- 
sponsibility, the  crisis,  the  claim  of  the  moment, 
will  outweigh  and  obliterate  all  personal,  all 
fruitless  considerations.  He  must  have  no 
thought  of  success;  if  it  comes,  he  may  rejoice 
that  he  has  been  a  faithful  interpreter,  and  has 
shared  his  joy  with  others;  if  it  does  not  come, 
his  joy  is  not  lessened. 

Then,  too,  in  ordering  his  life,  he  must  be 
humble,  sincere,  and  simple.  He  must  keep  his 
eye  and  his  mind  open  to  all  generous  admira- 
tions. He  must  let  no  lust  or  appetite,  no  am- 
bition or  pride,  cloud  his  vision.  He  must 
take  delight  in  the  work  of  other  artists,  and 
strive  to  see  the  beautiful  and  perfect  rather 


The  Artist's  Joys  223 

than  the  false  and  feeble.  He  must  rejoice 
if  he  can  see  his  own  dream  more  seriously  and 
sweetly  depicted  than  he  can  himself  depict 
it,  for  he  must  care  for  nothing  but  the  triumph 
of  beauty  over  ugliness,  of  light  over  darkness. 
And  thus  the  true  artist  may  be  most  easily 
told  by  his  lavish  appreciation  of  the  work  of 
other  artists,  rather  than  by  his  censure  and 
disapproval. 

And,  again,  he  must  be  able  to  take  delight 
in  the  smallest  and  humblest  beauties  of  life. 
He  must  not  need  to  travel  far  and  wide  in 
the  search  for  what  is  romantic,  but  he  must 
find  it  lying  richly  all  about  him  in  the  simplest 
scene.  He  must  not  crave  for  excitement  or 
startling  events  or  triumphs  or  compliments;  he 
must  not  desire  to  know  or  to  be  known  by 
famous  persons,  because  his  joys  must  all 
flow  from  a  purer  and  clearer  fountain-head. 
He  must  find  no  day  nor  hour  dreary,  and  his 
only  fatigue  must  be  the  wholesome  fatigue 
that  follows  on  patient  labour,  not  the  jaded 
fatigue  of  the  strained  imagination. 

Age,  and  even  infirmity,  does  not  dull  the 
zest  of  such  a  nature;  it  merely  substitutes  a 
range  of  gentler  and  more  tranquil  emotions 
for  the  heroic  and  passionate  enthusiasms  of 
youth;  for  the  true  artist  knows  that  the  emo- 
tion of  which  he  is  in  search  is  something  far 
higher  and  purer  and  more  vivid  than  his  fierc- 


224  The  Silent  Isle 

est  imaginations — and  yet  it  has  the  calm  of 
strength  and  the  dignity  of  worth ;  the  vehement 
impulses  of  youth  "  do  it  wrong,  being  so  majesti- 
cal."  And  he  draws  nearer  to  it  when  animal 
heat  and  the  turbulence  of  youthful  spirit  has 
burnt  clearer  and  hotter,  throwing  off  its  smoke 
and  lively  flame  for  a  keener  and  purer  glow. 

And  above  all  things,  the  artist  must  most 
beware  of  the  complacency,  the  sense  of  vic- 
tory, the  belief  that  he  has  attained,  has  plumbed 
the  depth,  seen  into  the  heart  of  the  mystery. 
Rather  as  life  draws  on  he  must  feel,  in  awe  and 
hope,  that  it  is  infinitely  mightier  and  greater 
than  he  thought  in  the  days  of  potent  impulse. 
His  whole  soul  must  be  full  of  a  sacred  fear  as 
he  draws  closer  to  the  gate,  the  opening  of 
which  may  give  him  a  nearer  glimpse  of  the 
secret.  The  humble  sense  of  failure  will  be 
a  bright  and  noble  thought,  because  it  will 
show  him  how  much  the  mystery  transcends 
the  most  daring  hope  and  dream. 


XXXI 

I  was  present  in  a  great  church  the  other  day 
at  a  service  held  at  the  hour  of  sunset.  The 
dying  light  fell  richly  through  the  stained 
windows,  lending  a  deep  and  beautiful  mystery 
to  the  scenes  there  depicted.  The  pale  faces  of 
pictured  saints,  with  their  rich  robes,  were 
outlined  with  a  pathetic  sweetness  against 
backgrounds  of  solemn  buildings  or  confused 
woods.  The  lighted  tapers  of  the  choir  threw 
a  faint  glow  up  to  the  intricate  roof,  which 
seemed  flooded  with  a  golden  mist;  the  gilt 
pipes  of  the  organ  gleamed  softly;  the  music 
began  to  roll  and  stir,  with  a  grave  melodious 
thunder,  like  the  voice  of  a  dreaming  spirit.  A 
procession  of  white-vested  figures  moved  with 
a  ceremonial  dignity  to  their  places,  and  then 
the  service  proceeded  through  soft  gradations 
of  prayer  and  praise,  in  words  of  exquisite  and 
restrained  felicity,  all  haunted  with  the  echoes 
of  the  ages.  I  sate  alone,  a  silent  listener,  and 
it  seemed  to  me  that  every  appeal  which  the 
beauty  of  art  could  make  to  the  spirit  was  here 
delicately  displayed.  Eye  and  ear,  emotion 
is  225 


226  The  Silent  Isle 

and  intellect,  were  alike  thrilled  and  satisfied. 
They  sang  the  119th  Psalm,  that  perfect  ex- 
pression of  holy  quietude:  "Thy  testimonies 
are  wonderful;  therefore  doth  my  soul  keep 
them. "  Wonderful,  indeed,  and  gracious,  sweet 
as  honey.  The  heart,  in  that  glad  moment, 
drew  near  to  the  tender  Father  of  life,  who 
seemed,  as  in  the  old  parable,  to  see  the  re- 
pentant son  of  his  heart  wandering  sadly  a 
long  way  off,  to  go  forth  to  meet  him,  and  to 
fill  the  house  with  light  and  music,  that  he  might 
feel  it  to  be  home  indeed. 

That  the  instinct  that  has  drawn  all  the 
treasures  of  art  into  its  service,  and  with  them 
welcomes  and  sustains  the  wearied  soul,  is  a 
pure  and  beautiful  one,  I  make  no  doubt.  But 
then  I  thought  of  all  that  lies  outside :  of  crowded 
cities,  of  the  ugly  mirth,  the  sordid  cares  of 
men  and  women;  of  the  dark  laws  that  wound 
and  slay;  of  pain  and  shame;  of  tired  la- 
bour and  cruelty  and  harshness,  of  lust  and 
greediness. 

I  thought  of  how  few  there  were  of  mankind 
to  whom  the  sweet  pomp  which  I  sate  to  see 
and  hear  makes  any  appeal.  I  thought  that 
for  one  to  whom  such  beauty  was  desirable 
and  satisfying,  there  were  thousands  who  would 
prefer  the  brisk  interchange  of  life,  the  race- 
course, the  athletic  spectacle,  the  restaurant, 
the  tap-room.    Was  this,  indeed,  religion  at  all? 


The  Sanctuary  227 

I  wondered.  It  did,  indeed,  use  the  language 
of  religion,  surround  itself  with  the  memories 
of  saints,  the  holy  wisdom  of  the  ages.  But 
what  was  the  end  of  it?  Did  it  inspire 
those  who  heard  it  with  the  desire  to  win, 
to  sustain,  to  ameliorate  other  souls?  Did  it 
inculcate  the  tender  affection,  the  self-sac- 
rifice, the  meek  devotion  that  Christ  breathed 
into  life?  Did  it  not  rather  tend  to  isolate  the 
soul  in  a  paradise  of  art,  to  consecrate  the  pur- 
suit of  individual  emotion?  It  is  hard  to 
imagine  that  a  spirit  who  has  plunged  into  the 
intoxication  of  sensuous  delight  that  such  a 
solemnity  brings  would  depart  without  an  in- 
creased aversion  to  all  that  was  loud  and  rude, 
with  an  intensified  reluctance  to  mingle  with 
the  coarser  throng.  Was  it  not  utterly  alien 
to  the  spirit  of  Christ  thus  to  seclude  oneself  in 
light  and  warmth,  among  sweet  strains  of  music 
and  holy  pictures?  I  do  not  doubt  that  these 
delights  have  a  certain  ennobling  effect  upon 
the  spirit;  but  are  they  a  medicine  for  the  sor- 
rows of  the  world?  are  they  not  rather  the 
anodyne  for  sensitive  spirits  fond  of  tranquil 
ease? 

I  could  not  restrain  the  thought  that  if  a 
man  of  sensitive  nature  is  penetrated  with  the 
spirit  of  Christ  first,  if  the  passion  of  his  soul 
to  seek  and  save  the  lost  is  irresistible,  if  his 
faith  runs  clear  and  strong,   he  might  win  a 


228  The  Silent  Isle 

holy  refreshment  from  these  peaceful,  sweet 
solemnities.  But  the  danger  is  for  those  who 
have  no  such  unselfish  enthusiasm,  and  who 
are  tempted,  under  the  guise  of  religion,  to 
yield  themselves  with  a  sense  of  fastidious  com- 
placency to  what  are,  after  all,  mere  sensuous 
delights.  Is  it  right  to  countenance  such 
error?  If  piety  frankly  said,  "These  things 
are  no  part  of  religion  at  all;  they  are  only  a 
pure  region  of  spiritual  beauty,  a  garden  of 
refreshment  into  which  a  pilgrim  may  enter 
by  the  way;  only  a  mere  halting-place,  a  home 
of  comfort,  " — then  I  should  feel  that  it  would  be 
a  consistent  attitude.  But  if  it  is  only  a  con- 
cession to  the  desire  of  beauty,  if  it  distracts 
men  from  the  purpose  of  Christ,  if  it  is  a  mere 
bait  for  artistic  souls,  then  I  cannot  believe 
that  it  is  justified. 

While  I  thus  pondered,  the  anthem  rose 
loud  and  sweet  upon  the  air;  all  the  pathos, 
the  desire  of  the  world,  the  craving  for  deli- 
cious rest,  stirred  and  spoke  in  those  moving 
strains — round  a  quiet  minor  air,  sung  by  a 
deep  grave  voice  of  a  velvety  softness,  a  hund- 
red mellow  pipes  wove  their  sweet  harmonies: 
it  told  assuredly  of  a  hope  and  of  a  truth  far 
off;  it  drew  the  soul  into  a  secret  haven, 
where  it  listened  contentedly  to  the  roar  of 
the  surge  outside.  But  the  error  seemed  to 
be    that   one    desired  to  rest    there,    like    the 


Further  Yet  229 

Lotos-eaters  in  the  enchanted  land,  and  not 
to  fare  forth  as  a  soldier  of  God.  It  spoke 
of  delight,  not  of  hardness;  of  acquiescence, 
not  of  effort. 


XXXII 

Strange  that  the  sight  of  a  man  being  guil- 
lotined should  inspire  me  with  a  burning  de- 
sire to  inflict  the  very  thing  which  I  see  another 
suffer!  What  a  violent  metaphor  for  a  very- 
minute  matter!  It  is  only  a  review  which  I 
have  been  reading,  in  which  a  pompous,  and  I 
imagine  clerical,  critic  comes  down  with  all  his 
might  on  a  man  whom  I  gather  is  a  graceful 
and  mildly  speculative  writer.  The  critic  asks 
ponderously,  What  right  has  a  man  who  seems 
to  be  untrained  in  philosophy  and  theology  to 
speculate  on  philosophical  and  religious  mat- 
ters? He  then  goes  on  to  quote  a  passage  in 
which  the  writer  attacks  the  current  view  of 
the  doctrine  of  the  Atonement,  and  he  adds 
that  a  man  who  is  unacquainted  with  the  strides 
which  theology  has  made  of  late  years  in  the 
direction  of  elucidating  that  doctrine  ought 
not  to  presume  to  discuss  it  at  all.  No  doubt, 
if  the  writer  in  question  made  any  claim  to 
be  discussing  the  latest  theological  position 
on  the  subject  of  the  Atonement,  in  a  technical 
way,  he  would  be  a  mere  sciolist;  but  he  is  only 

230 


The  Right  of  Speculation      231 

claiming  to  discuss  the  current  conception  of 
the  Atonement;  and,  as  far  as  I  can  judge, 
he  states  it  fairly  enough.  The  truth  is  that 
the  current  conceptions  of  old  theological  doc- 
trines tend  to  be  very  much  what  the  original 
framers  of  those  doctrines  intended  them  to  be. 
All  that  later  theologians  can  do,  when  the 
old  doctrine  is  exploded,  is  to  prove  that  the 
doctrine  can  be  modified  and  held  in  some 
philosophical  or  metaphysical  sense,  which  was 
certainly  not  in  the  least  degree  contemplated 
by  the  theologians  who  framed  it;  but  they  are 
quite  unable  to  explain  to  the  man  in  the  street 
what  the  new  form  of  the  doctrine  is;  and  their 
only  chance  of  doing  that  is  to  substitute 
for  an  old  and  perfectly  clear  doctrine  a  new 
and  perfectly  clear  doctrine.  The  tone  adopted 
by  this  critic  reminds  me  of  the  tone  adopted 
by  Newman  to  his  disciples.  Mark  Pattison 
relates  how  on  one  occasion  he  advanced,  in 
Newman's  presence,  some  liberal  opinion,  in 
the  days  when  he  was  himself  numbered 
among  the  Tractarians;  and  that  Newman 
deposited,  as  was  his  wont,  an  icy  "Very  likely ! " 
upon  the  statement;  after  which,  Pattison  says, 
you  were  expected  to  go  into  a  corner  and  think 
over  your  sins.  Not  so  does  thought  make 
progress ! 

But  the  larger  question  is  this.     What  right 
have  philosophers  or  theologians  to  arrogate  to 


232  The  Silent  Isle 

themselves  the  sole  right  of  speculation  in 
these  matters?  If  religion  is  a  vital  matter, 
and  if  all  of  us  who  have  any  thoughts  at  all 
about  life  and  its  issues  are  by  necessity  to 
a  certain  extent  practical  philosophers,  why 
should  we  meekly  surrender  the  stuff  of  specu- 
lation to  technical  disputants?  Of  course, 
there  are  certain  regions  of  experiment  that 
must  be  left  to  specialists,  and  a  scientist 
who  devoted  himself  to  embryology  might 
justly  complain  of  a  man  who  aired  views  on 
the  subject  without  adequate  study.  But  as  far 
as  life  goes,  any  thoughtful  and  intelligent  man 
who  has  lived  and  reflected  is  in  a  sense  a 
specialist.  In  life  and  conduct,  in  morality  and 
religion,  we  are  all  of  us  making  experiments 
all  day  long,  whether  we  will  or  no;  and  it  may 
be  fairly  said  that  a  middle-aged  man  who  has 
lived  thoughtfully  has  given  up  far  more  time 
to  his  subject  than  the  greatest  scientist  has 
devoted  to  his  particular  branch.  A  church- 
goer, like  myself,  has  been  lectured  once  or 
twice  a  week  on  theology  for  as  long  as  he  can 
remember.  For  years  I  have  speculated,  with 
deep  curiosity,  on  problems  of  religion,  on  the 
object  and  ultimate  issues  of  life  and  death. 
Neither  philosophers  nor  theologians  have 
ever  discovered  a  final  solution  which  satis- 
fies all  the  data.  The  theologian,  indeed,  is 
encumbered  by  a  vast  mass  of  human  tradi- 


Theologians  233 

tion,  which  he  is  compelled  to  treat  more  or  less 
as  divine  revelation.  The  whole  religious  posi- 
tion has  been  metamorphosed  by  scientific 
discovery;  and  what  theologian  or  philosopher 
has  ever  come  near  to  solving  the  incompatibil- 
ity of  the  apparent  inflexibility  of  natural  law 
with  the  no  less  apparent  liberty  of  moral  choice? 
Theologians  and  philosophers  may,  if  they 
choose,  attempt  to  crush  the  speculations  of  an 
experimentalist  in  life,  though  I  think  they 
would  be  better  employed  in  welcoming  them 
as  an  instance  of  how  theological  and  meta- 
physical conceptions  strike  upon  the  ordinary 
mind;  but  they  shall  not  prevent  one  who,  like 
myself,  has  observed  life  closely  under  aspects 
under  which  the  technical  student  has  had  no 
opportunity  of  observing  it,  from  making  my 
comment  upon  what  I  see.  It  is  possible  that 
such  comments  may  appeal  to  ordinary  people 
with  even  more  force  than  technical  considera- 
tions are  likely  to  appeal.  We  have  all  to  sin  and 
to  suffer,  to  enjoy  and  to  fear;  we  find  our  in- 
stinct at  variance  with  our  reason  and  our  moral 
sense  alike.  We  have  in  our  souls  conceptions 
of  justice,  truth,  purity,  generosity,  and  we 
find  the  natural  law,  which  we  would  fain  believe 
is  the  law  of  God,  constantly  thwarting  and  even 
insulting  these  conceptions;  and  yet  these  con- 
ceptions are  as  real  and  vivid  to  us  as  the  law 
which   takes   no   account   of   them.     We   find 


234  The  Silent  Isle 

theologians  basing  their  faith  on  documents 
which  every  day  appear  to  be  less  and  less 
historical,  and  on  deductions  drawn  from  these 
documents  by  men  who  believed  them  to  be 
historical.  I  have  the  utmost  sympathy  with 
the  position  in  which  theologians  find  them- 
selves; but  they  have  mostly  their  own  pru- 
dence to  thank  for  it;  they  are  so  cautious 
about  sifting  the  chaff  from  the  grain,  that  they 
will  not  throw  away  the  chaff  for  fear  of  cast- 
ing away  a  single  grain.  They  are  so  averse 
to  unsettling  the  faith  of  the  weak,  that  the 
vitality  has  ebbed  away  from  the  faith  of  the 
strong;  they  have  clung  so  hard  to  tradition, 
that  they  have  obscured  fact;  they  would  con- 
fine the  limb,  of  manhood  in  the  garb  of  child- 
hood ;  and  thus  they  have  forfeited  the  confidence 
of  intelligent  men,  and  ranged  themselves  with 
the  credulous,  the  comfortable,  and  the  unen- 
terprising. Intolerant  persecution  is  out  of 
date,  and  the  question  will  be  solved  by  the 
stranding  of  the  theological  hull,  owing  to  the 
quiet  withdrawal  of  the  vital  tide. 


XXXIII 

My  way  this  afternoon  lay  through  a  succes- 
sion of  old  hamlets,  one  closely  bordering  on 
another,  that  lie  all  along  the  base  of  the  wold. 
I  have  no  doubt  that  the  reason  for  their  posi- 
tion is  simply  that  it  is  just  along  the  base  of  the 
hills  that  the  springs  break  out,  and  a  village 
near  a  perennial  and  pure  spring  generally 
represents  a  very  old  human  settlement  in- 
deed. Sometimes  the  wold  drew  near  the 
road,  sometimes  lay  more  remote;  its  pale 
fallows,  its  faintly-tinted  pastures,  seemed  to 
lie  very  quietly  to-day  under  the  grey  laden 
sky.  Here  a  chalk-pit  showed  its  miniature 
precipices;  here  a  leafless  covert  detached  its 
wiry  sprays  against  the  light.  The  villages  were 
pretty  enough,  with  their  quaint,  irregular 
white  cottages,  comfortably  thatched,  among  the 
little  orchards  and  gardens;  and  in  every  village 
the  ancient,  beautiful  church,  each  with  a 
character  of  its  own  and  a  special  feature  of 
interest  or  beauty,  lay  nestled  in  trees,  or  held 
up  its  grey  tower  over  ricks  and  barns.  We 
are  apt  to  forget  what  beautiful  things  these 

235 


236  The  Silent  Isle 

churches  are,  because  they  are  so  common, 
so  familiar;  if  there  were  but  a  few  of  them, 
we  should  make  careful  pilgrimages  to  see  them, 
but  now  we  hardly  turn  off  the  road  to  visit 
them. 

I  often  wonder  what  exactly  the  feeling  and 
the  spirit  were  that  produced  them,  what  the 
demand  precisely  was  that  created  the  supply. 
I  suppose  they  were  almost  always  the  gift 
of  some  wealthy  person;  of  course  labour  and 
perhaps  materials  were  cheaper,  but  there  must 
have  been  a  much  larger  proportion  of  people 
employed  in  the  trade  of  building  than  is  the 
case  nowadays;  probably  these  churches  were 
slowly  and  leisurely  built,  in  the  absence  of 
modern  mechanical  facilities.  It  is  difficult 
to  conceive  how  the  thing  was  carried  out  at 
all  in  places  with  so  few  resources — how  the 
stone  was  conveyed  thither  over  the  infamous 
miry  roads,  how  the  carving  was  done,  how  the 
builders  were  lodged  and  fed.  One  would 
like,  too,  to  know  exactly  what  part  the  churches 
played  in  the  social  life  of  the  place.  Some 
people  would  have  us  believe  that  the  country 
people  of  that  date  had  a  simple  enjoyment  of 
beauty  and  artistic  instincts  which  caused 
them  to  take  a  pleasure,  which  they  do  not 
now  feel,  in  these  beautiful  little  sanctuaries. 
I  do  not  know  what  the  evidence  is  for  that. 
I  find  it  very  hard  to  believe  that  our  agricul- 


Village  Churches  237 

tural  labourers  have  gone  backwards  in  this 
respect;  I  should  imagine  it  was  rather  the 
other  way.  My  impression  is  that  education 
has  probably  increased  the  power  of  perception 
and  appreciation  rather  than  diminished  it. 
It  is  possible  that  the  absence  of  excitement,  of 
diffuse  reading,  of  communication  in  those 
days  may  have  tended  to  concentrate  the 
affections  and  interests  of  agricultural  people 
more  on  their  immediate  surroundings,  but  I 
rather  doubt  it;  the  problem  is,  considering 
the  much  greater  roughness  and  coarseness  of 
village  life  in  the  Middle  Ages,  how  there 
could  have  existed  a  poetical  and  artistic  in- 
stinct among  villagers,  which  they  have  now 
forfeited. 

These  churches  certainly  indicate  that  a 
very  different  view  of  religion  prevailed;  they 
testify  to  a  simpler  and  stronger  sense  of  reli- 
gion than  now  exists,  but  not,  I  think,  to  a 
truer  sense  of  it.  They  stand,  I  do  not  doubt, 
for  a  much  more  superstitious  and  barbarous 
view  of  the  relation  of  God  to  men;  the  people 
who  built  them  had,  I  imagine,  the  idea  of 
conciliating  God  by  the  gift  of  a  seemly  sanctu- 
ary, a  hope  of  improving  not  only  their  spirit- 
ual prospects  in  the  after-life,  but  of  possibly 
advancing  their  material  prosperity  in  this, 
by  thus  displaying  their  piety  and  zeal  in  God 's 
service.     I    cannot   believe    that    the   churches 


238  The  Silent  Isle 

were  designed  with  the  intention  of  making 
the  rustic  inhabitants  of  the  place  holier, 
more  virtuous,  more  refined — except  incident- 
ally; they  were  built  more  in  obedience  to  ec- 
clesiastical tradition,  in  a  time  when  rationalism 
had  not  begun  to  cast  doubt  on  what  I  may  call 
the  Old  Testament  theory  of  the  relation  of  God 
to  men — the  theory  of  a  wrathful  power, 
vindictive,  jealous  of  recognition,  withholding 
blessings  from  the  impious  and  heaping  them 
upon  the  submissive.  As  to  those  who  wor- 
shipped there,  I  imagine  that  the  awe  and  rever- 
ence they  felt  was  based  upon  the  same  sort 
of  view,  and  connected  religious  observance 
with  the  hope  of  prosperity  and  wealth,  and 
the  neglect  of  it  with  the  fear  of  chastise- 
ment. If  misfortune  fell  upon  the  godly,  they 
regarded  it  as  the  chastening  of  God  inflicted 
upon  the  sons  of  His  love;  if  it  fell  upon  the 
ungodly,  it  was  a  punishment  for  sin;  religion 
was  a  process  by  which  one  might  avert  the 
punishment  of  sin,  induce  the  bestowal  of 
favours,  and  in  any  case  improve  one's  future 
prospects  of  heaven.  No  doubt  this  form  of 
religion  produced  a  simpler  kind  of  faith,  and 
a  profounder  reverence;  but  I  do  not  think 
that  they  were  very  beautiful  qualities  when 
so  produced,  because  they  seem  to  me  very 
alien  from  the  simplicity  of  the  religion  of  Christ. 
The  difficulty  in  which  popular  religion  finds 


Village  Churches  239 

itself,  nowadays,  is  that  in  a  Protestant  Church 
like  our  own,  neither  priest  nor  people  believe 
in  the  old  mechanical  theories  of  religion,  and 
yet  the  people  are  not  yet  capable  of  being  moved 
by  purer  conceptions  of  it.  A  priest  can  no 
longer  threaten  his  congregation  sincerely  with 
the  penalties  of  hell  for  neglecting  the  observ- 
ances of  the  Church;  on  the  other  hand,  the 
conception  of  religion  as  a  refining,  solemnising 
attitude  of  soul,  bringing  tranquillity  and  har- 
mony into  life,  is  too  subtle  an  idea  to  have  a 
very  general  hold  upon  unimaginative  persons. 
Thus  the  beauty  of  these  exquisite  and  stately 
little  sanctuaries,  enriched  by  long  associa- 
tions and  touched  with  a  delicate  grace  by  the 
gentle  hand  of  time,  has  something  infinitely 
pathetic  about  it.  The  theory  that  brought 
them  into  existence  has  lost  its  hold,  while 
the  spirit  that  could  animate  them  and  give 
them  a  living  message  has  not  yet  entered  them ; 
the  refined  grace,  the  sweet  solemnity  of 
these  simple  buildings,  has  no  voice  for  the 
plain,  sensible  villager;  it  cannot  be  interpreted 
to  him.  If  all  the  inhabitants  of  a  village  were 
humble,  simple,  spiritually-minded  people,  as- 
cetic in  life,  with  a  strong  sense  of  beauty  and 
quality,  then  a  village  church  might  have 
a  tranquil  and  inspiring  influence.  But  who 
that  knows  anything  of  village  life  can  antici- 
pate even  in  the  remote  future  such  a  type  of 


240  The  Silent  Isle 

character  prevailing?  Meanwhile  the  beauti- 
ful churches,  with  all  the  grace  of  antiquity 
and  subtle  beauty,  must  stand  as  survivals 
of  a  very  different  condition  of  life  and  belief; 
while  we  who  love  them  can  only  hope  that  a 
more  vital  consciousness  of  religion  may  come 
back  to  the  shrines  from  which  somehow  the 
significance  seems  to  have  ebbed  away.  They 
are  now  too  often  mere  monuments  and  memo- 
rials of  the  past.  Can  one  hope  that  they  may 
become  the  inspiration  and  the  sanctification 
of  the  present? 


XXXIV 

I  have  just  returned  from  a  very  curious  and 
interesting  visit.  I  have  been  to  stay  with 
an  old  school  friend  of  my  own,  a  retired  Major; 
he  has  a  small  place  of  his  own  in  the  country, 
and  has  lately  married  a  very  young  and  pretty 
wife.  I  met  him  by  chance  in  my  club  in 
London,  looking  more  grey  and  dim  than  a  man 
who  has  just  married  a  lovely  and  charming 
girl  ought  to  look.  He  asked  me  rather  press- 
ingly  to  come  and  stay  with  him;  and  though 
I  do  not  like  country-house  visits,  for  the  sake 
of  the  old  days  I  went. 

Well,  it  was  a  very  interesting  visit;  I  was 
warmly  welcomed.  The  young  wife,  who  I 
must  say  is  the  daughter  of  a  penniless  country 
clergyman  with  a  large  family,  was  radiant; 
the  Major  was  quietly  and  undemonstratively 
pleased  to  see  me;  the  veil  of  the  years  fell  off, 
and  I  found  myself  back  on  the  old  easy  terms 
with  him,  as  when  we  were  schoolboys  together 
thirty  years  ago.  He  is  a  very  simple  and  trans- 
parent creature,  and  I  read  him  as  if  he  were  a 
book.  He  indulged  in  almost  extravagant 
16  241 


242  The  Silent  Isle 

panegyrics  of  his  wife  and  descriptions  of  his 
own  happiness.  But  I  very  soon  made  a  dis- 
covery: his  charming  wife  is,  not  to  put  too 
fine  a  point  upon  it,  a  fool.  She  is  perfectly 
harmless,  good-natured,  and  virtuous.  But 
she  is  a  very  silly  and  a  very  conventional 
girl.  She  is  full  of  delight  at  her  promotion; 
but  she  is  entirely  brainless,  and  not  even  very 
affectionate.  She  is  wholly  preoccupied  about 
her  new  possessions,  and  the  place  she  is  going 
to  take  in  the  county;  she  cares  for  her  hus- 
band, because  he  represents  her  social  success, 
and  because  he  is  a  creditable  and  presentable 
man.  But  she  has  no  grain  of  sympathy,  per- 
ception, humour,  or  emotion.  I  began  by  think- 
ing it  was  rather  a  tragedy;  my  old  friend  had 
married  for  love;  he  is  anything  but  a  fool  him- 
self, except  for  this  one  serious  error,  the  falling 
in  love  with  a  girl  who  can  give  him  none  of  the 
things  he  desires.  He  is  a  very  serious,  simple, 
intelligent,  and  tender-hearted  fellow,  with  all 
sorts  of  odd  ideas  of  his  own,  which  he  produces 
with  an  admirable  humility.  He  likes  books; 
he  reads  poetry — I  even  suspect  him  of  writing 
it.  He  is  interested  in  social  problems,  and  has 
a  dozen  kindly  enterprises — a  club,  a  carving 
class,  a  natural  history  society,  and  so  forth — 
for  the  benefit  of  the  village  where  he  lives. 
He  would  have  been  an  ideal  country  clergy- 
man; he  is  an  excellent  man  of  business,  and 


The  Major  243 

does  a  good  deal  of  county  work.  He  is  fond 
of  sport,  too — in  fact,  one  of  those  grave,  affec- 
tionate, solid  men  who  are  to  be  found  living 
quietly  in  every  part  of  England — a  character- 
istic Englishman,  indeed.  But  the  strain  of 
romance  in  his  nature  has  for  once  led  him 
wrong,  and  the  mistake  seemed  irreparable.  I 
was  at  first  inclined  to  regard  him  with  deep 
compassion.  He  is  the  soul  of  chivalry,  and  it 
struck  me  as  deeply  pathetic  to  see  him  smiling 
indulgently,  but  with  a  sad  and  bewildered  air, 
at  the  terrible  snobbishness,  to  be  candid, 
which  his  lively  wife's  conversation  revealed. 
She  was  for  ever  talking  about  "the  right 
people,"  and  the  only  subject  which  seemed  to 
arouse  her  enthusiasm  was  the  fact  that  she  had 
been  received  on  equal  terms  by  some  of  the 
wives  of  neighbouring  squires.  The  Major 
tried  to  give  a  pleasant  turn  to  the  conversa- 
tion, and  when  he  was  alone  with  me,  after 
praising  the  practical  good  sense  of  his  wife, 
added,  "Of  course  she  hasn't  quite  settled  down 
yet!  She  has  lived  rather  a  poky  life,  and  the 
change  has  upset  her  a  little."  That  was  the 
nearest  that  the  good  fellow  could  get  to  an 
apology,  and  it  touched  me  a  good  deal.  I 
did  my  part,  and  praised  my  hostess's  charm 
and  beauty,  and  expressed  gratitude  for  the 
warmth  of  my  welcome. 

But  now  that  I  have  had  time  to  reflect  on 


244  The  Silent  Isle 

the  situation,  I  am  not  at  all  sure  that  the  Major 
is  not  to  be  congratulated  after  all.  He  has  got 
before  him  a  perfectly  definite  occupation,  and 
one  which  he  will  fulfil  with  all  the  generosity 
of  his  nature.  He  was  a  lonely  man  before  his 
marriage,  and,  like  all  lonely  men,  was  becom- 
ing somewhat  self-absorbed.  Now  his  work 
is  cut  out  for  him.  He  has  got  to  make  the 
best  of  a  tiresome  and  unsympathetic  wife. 
I  will  venture  to  say  that  if  the  Major  lives  to 
be  eighty,  his  wife  will  never  suspect  that  he 
does  not  adore  and  admire  her.  He  will  never 
say  a  harsh  or  unkind  or  critical  thing  to  her. 
He  may  induce  her,  perhaps,  by  gentle  pre- 
cepts, to  moderate  her  complacency;  and  per- 
haps, too,  they  will  have  children,  and  some 
kind  affection  may  awake  in  his  shallow  little 
partner's  heart.  The  Major  will  make  a 
perfect  father,  and  he  will  find  in  his  children, 
if  only  they  inherit  something  of  his  own  wise 
and  tender  nature,  a  deep  and  lasting  joy.  I 
think  that  if  he  had  married  an  adoring  and 
sympathetic  wife,  he  might  almost  have  grown 
exacting — perhaps  even  selfish,  because  he  is 
the  sort  of  man  that  requires  to  have  the  best 
part  of  him  evoked.  He  is  unambitious  and 
in  a  way  indolent;  and  if  everything  had  been 
done  for  him — his  wishes  anticipated,  sym- 
pathy lavished  upon  him — he  would  have 
had  no    region  in  which  to    exercise  that  self- 


The  Major  245 

restraint  which  is  now  a  necessity  of  the  case. 
We  are  very  liable  to  try  and  arrange  the 
lives  of  others  for  them,  and  to  think  we  could 
have  done  better  for  them  than  Providence; 
and  since  I  have  pondered  over  the  situation, 
I  am  inclined  to  be  ashamed  of  myself  for  feel- 
ing the  regret  which  I  began  by  feeling.  If 
there  was  any  weakness  in  my  friend's  mind, 
if  I  thought  that  he  would  grow  irritable, 
harsh,  impatient  with  his  silly  wife,  it  would  be 
different.  But  he  will  have  to  stand  between 
her  and  the  world;  she  will  shock  and  distress 
all  his  finer  feelings  and  instincts  of  propriety. 
They  will  go  and  pay  visits,  and  he  will  have  to 
hear  her  saying  all  sorts  of  trivial  and  vulgar 
things.  He  will  make  himself  into  a  kind 
guardian  and  interpreter  and  champion  for  this 
foolish  young  woman.  She  will  try  his  patience, 
his  endurance,  his  chivalry  to  the  uttermost; 
and  he  will  never  fail  her  for  an  instant — he 
will  never  even  confess  to  himself  in  the  loneli- 
ness of  his  own  heart  that  there  is  anything 
amiss.  The  severest  criticism  he  will  ever  pass 
upon  her  will  be  a  half-hearted  wish  that  she 
should  exhibit  the  best  side  of  herself  more 
consistently.  And  so  I  come  at  last  to  think 
that  there  are  many  worse  things  in  the  world 
for  a  strong  man  than  to  be  the  bulwark  and 
fortress  of  a  thoroughly  inferior  nature.  He 
feels   the  strain   at   first,   because  it  is   all   so 


246  The  Silent  Isle 

different  from  what  he  expected  and  hoped. 
But  he  will  soon  grow  used  to  that.  And, 
after  all,  his  wife  is  both  lovely  and  healthy; 
she  will  always  be  delightful  to  look  at.  In- 
deed, if  he  can  teach  her  to  hold  her  tongue, 
to  listen  instead  of  rattling  away,  to  smile 
with  those  pretty  eyes  of  hers  as  if  she  under- 
stood, to  ask  the  simplest  questions  about 
other  people's  tastes  and  preferences,  instead  of 
describing  her  own  garden  and  poultry-yard, 
she  might  pass  for  a  delightful  and  even  en- 
chanting woman.  But  I  fear  that  neither  he 
nor  she  is  quite  clever  enough  for  that.  I 
do  not  personally  envy  my  old  friend;  if  I 
were  in  his  position,  the  situation  would  bring 
out  the  very  worst  side  of  my  nature.  But 
because  I  realise  how  much  better  a  fellow  he 
is  than  myself,  I  believe  that  he  has  every 
prospect  of  being  a  decidedly  happy  man. 


XXXV 

There  are  certain  writers — men,  too,  of  ability, 
humour,  perspicacity,  with  wide  knowledge,  lu- 
cidity of  expression,  firm  intellectual  grip, 
genuine  admirations,  who  really  live  among  the 
things  of  the  mind — whose  writings  are  almost 
wholly  distressing  to  me,  and  affect  me  ex- 
actly as  the  cry  of  an  itinerant  vendor  in 
a  quiet  and  picturesque  town  affects  me.  It 
is  an  honest  trade  enough;  he  saves  people 
a  great  deal  of  trouble;  he  sells,  no  doubt, 
perfectly  wholesome  and  inexpensive  things; 
but  I  am  glad  when  he  has  turned  the  corner, 
and  when  his  raucous  clamour  is  heard  more 
faintly — glad  when  he  is  out  of  sight,  and  still 
more  when  he  is  out  of  hearing.  So  with  these 
authors;  if  I  take  up  one  of  their  books,  however 
brilliant  and  even  true  the  statements  may  be, 
I  am  sorry  that  the  writer  has  laid  hands  upon 
a  thing  I  admire  and  value.  He  seems  like  a 
damp-handed  auctioneer,  bawling  in  public, 
and  pointing  out  the  beauties  of  a  mute  and 
pathetic  statue. 

I  am  thinking   now   of   one   writer    in   par- 

247 


248  The  Silent  Isle 

ticular,  a  well-known  man  of  letters,  a  critic, 
essayist,  and  biographer;  a  man  of  great  acute- 
ness  and  with  strong  and  vehement  preferences 
in  literature.  When  I  have  been  forced  by 
circumstances,  as  I  sometimes  have,  to  read 
one  of  his  books,  I  find  myself  at  once  in  a  con- 
dition of  irritable  opposition.  He  writes  sensi- 
bly, acutely,  epigrammatically ;  but  there  is  a 
vile  complacency  about  it  all,  an  underlying 
assumption  that  every  one  who  does  not  agree 
with  him  in  the  smallest  particular  is  necessarily 
a  fool — a  sense  that  he  feels  that  he  has  gone 
into  the  merits  of  a  book,  and  that  there  is 
exactly  as  much  and  as  little  in  it  as  he  tells 
you.  He  is  very  often  right;  that  is  the  misery 
of  it.  But  this  lack  of  urbanity,  this  unneces- 
sary insolence,  is  a  very  grave  fault  in  a  writer 
— fatal,  indeed,  to  his  permanence.  He  turns  a 
book  or  a  person  inside  out,  dissects  it  in  a 
deft  and  masterly  way;  but  one  feels  at  the 
end  as  one  might  feel  about  an  anatomist  who 
has  dissected  every  fibre  of  an  animal's  body, 
classified  every  organ,  traced  every  muscle 
and  nerve,  and  bids  you  at  the  end  take  it  on 
his  authority  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  the 
vital  principle  or  the  informing  soul,  because 
he  has  shown  you  everything  that  there  is  to 
see.  Yet  the  finest  essence  of  all,  the  living 
and  breathing  spirit,  has  escaped  him. 

But  what  is  a  still  worse  fault  in  the  writer 


The  Critic  249 

of  whom  I  speak  is  that  he  is  the  victim  of  a 
certain  intellectual  snobbishness.  By  which  I 
mean  that  when  he  has  once  conceived  an  ad- 
miration for  a  historical  personage  or  a  writer 
he  becomes  unable  to  critise  him;  he  can  only 
justify  and  praise  him,  sling  mud  at  his  op- 
ponents, and,  so  to  speak,  clear  a  space  round 
his  hero  by  knocking  over  in  opprobrious  terms 
any  one  who  may  threaten  his  supremacy. 
He  condones  and  even  praises  any  fault  in  his 
idol;  and  what  would  be  in  his  eyes  a  damning 
fault  in  one  whom  he  happened  to  dislike, 
becomes  a  salient  virtue  in  the  person  whom  he 
praises.  He  condemns  Swift  for  his  coarse- 
ness and  praises  Johnson  for  his  outspokenness. 
He  condemns  Robert  Browning  for  his  ob- 
scurity and  praises  George  Meredith  for  his 
rich  complexity.  He  would  never  see  that  the 
victory  lies  with  the  appreciator  of  any  person- 
ality, because,  if  you  happen  to  appreciate  a 
figure  whom  he  himself  dislikes,  you  are  pro- 
claimed to  be  guilty  of  perversity  and  bad  taste. 
Thus  I  not  only  feel  sore  when  he  abuses  a 
character  whom  I  love,  but  I  feel  ashamed  when 
he  decries  one  whom  I  hate,  for  I  am  tempted 
to  feel  that  I  must  have  grossly  misunderstood 
him;  and  even  when  he  rapturously  and  unctu- 
ously belauds  some  figure  that  I  admire,  I 
feel  my  admiration  to  be  smirched  and  tarnished. 
The  one   quality  which   I   think  he  always 


250  The  Silent  Isle 

misses  in  a  character  is  a  high,  pure,  delicate 
sense  of  beauty,  the  subtlest  fibre  of  poetry. 
This  my  swashbuckler  misnames  sentimentality 
— and  thus  I  feel  that  he  always  tends  to  admire 
the  wrong  qualities,  because  he  condones  even 
what  he  calls  sentimentality  in  one  whom  he 
chooses  to  admire. 

It  is  this  attitude  of  disdain  and  scorn,  based 
upon  the  intellect  rather  than  upon  the  soul, 
that  I  think  is  one  of  the  most  terrible  and 
satanical  things  in  life.  Such  a  quality  may  be 
valuable  in  scientific  research,  it  may  be  suc- 
cessful in  politics,  because  there  are  still  among 
us  many  elementary  people  who  really  like  to 
see  a  man  belaboured;  it  may  be  successful 
in  business,  it  may  bring  a  man  wealth,  posi- 
tion, and  a  certain  kind  of  influence.  But 
it  never  inspires  confidence  or  affection;  and 
though  such  a  man  may  be  feared  and  respected 
on  the  stage  of  life,  there  is  an  invariable  and 
general  sense  of  relief  when  he  quits  it. 

"The  fruit  of  the  Spirit, "  wrote  the  wise  apos- 
tle— who  knew,  too,  the  bitter  pleasures  of  a  ve- 
hement controversy,  and  was  no  milk-and-water 
saint — "the  fruit  of  the  Spirit  is  love,  joy, peace, 
meekness,  long-suffering,  kindness."  None  of 
these  fruits  hang  upon  the  vigorous  boughs  of 
our  friend's  tree.  He  is  rather  like  that  de- 
testable and  spidery  thing  the  araucaria,  which 
has  a  wound  for  every  tender  hand,  and  invites 


The  Interpreter  251 

no  bright-eyed  feathered  songsters  to  perch  or 
build  among  its  sinister  branches. 

The  only  critic  who  helps  me  is  the  critic 
whose  humility  keeps  pace  with  his  acuteness, 
who  leads  me  gently  where  he  has  himself 
trodden  patiently  and  observantly,  and  does 
not  attempt  to  disfigure  and  ravage  the  regions 
which  he  has  not  been  able  to  desire  to  explore. 
The  man  who  will  show  me  unsuspected  con- 
nections, secret  paths  of  thought,  who  will 
teach  me  how  to  extend  my  view,  how  I  may 
pass  quietly  from  the  known  to  the  unknown; 
who  will  show  me  that  stars  and  flowers  have 
voices,  and  that  running  water  has  a  quiet 
spirit  of  its  own;  and  who  in  the  strange  world 
of  human  life  will  unveil  for  me  the  hopes  and 
fears,  the  deep  and  varied  passions,  that  bind 
men  together  and  part  them,  and  that  seem  to 
me  such  unreasonable  and  inexplicable  things 
if  they  are  bounded  by  the  narrow  fences  of 
life — emotions  that  travel  so  long  and  intricate 
a  path,  that  are  born  with  such  an  amazing 
suddenness  and  attain  so  large  a  volume,  so 
fierce  a  velocity — this  is  the  interpreter  and 
guide  whom  I  would  welcome,  even  if  he  know 
but  a  little  more  than  myself;  while  if  my  guide 
is  infallible  and  disdainful,  if  he  denies  what 
he  cannot  see  and  derides  what  he  has  never 
felt,  then  I  feel  that  I  have  but  one  enemy  the 
more,  in  a  place  where  I  am  beset  with  foes. 


XXXVI 

I  have  had  rather  a  humiliating  experience 
to-day.  A  young  literary  man,  whom  I  knew 
slightly,  came  down  to  see  me,  and  stayed  the 
night.  He  was  a  small,  shapely,  trim  person- 
age, with  a  pale,  eloquent  face,  large  eyes, 
mobile  lips,  and  of  extraordinary  intelligence. 
I  was  prepared — I  make  the  confession  very 
frankly — to  find  a  certain  shyness  and  defer- 
ence about  my  young  friend.  He  has  not 
made  his  mark  as  yet,  though  I  think  he  is 
likely  to  make  it;  he  has  written  nothing  in 
particular,  whereas  I  am  rather  a  veteran  in 
these  matters. 

We  had  a  long  talk  about  all  kinds  of  things, 
mostly  books ;  and  it  presently  dawned  upon  me 
that,  so  far  from  being  either  shy  or  deferential, 
it  was  rather  the  other  way.  He  looked  upon 
himself,  and  quite  rightly,  as  an  advanced 
and  modern  young  man,  brimful  of  ideas  and 
thoroughly  abreast  of  the  thoughts  and  move- 
ment of  the  day.  Presently  I  made  a  fresh 
discovery,  that  he  looked  upon  me  as  an  old 
fogey,   from  whom  intelligence  and  sympathy 

252 


A  Modern  Young  Man        253 

could  hardly  be  expected.  He  discussed  some 
modern  books  with  great  acuteness,  and  I  be- 
came aware  that,  so  far  from  desiring  to  learn 
my  opinion,  he  had  not  the  slightest  wish  even 
to  hear  me  express  it.  He  listened  very  courte- 
ously to  my  criticisms,  as  a  man  might  listen 
to  the  talk  of  a  child.  However,  when  I  had 
once  got  hold  of  the  clue,  I  abandoned  myself 
joyfully  to  what  appeared  to  me  to  be  the 
humour  of  the  situation.  I  thought  to  myself 
that  here  was  an  opportunity  of  turning  inside 
out  the  mind  of  a  very  young  and  intelligent 
man.  I  might  learn,  I  thought,  what  the  new 
ideas  were,  the  direction  in  which  the  younger 
generation  were  tending.  Now,  it  would  be 
invidious  to  mention  the  names  of  the  books 
that  we  discussed.  Many  of  the  volumes 
that  he  ranked  very  high,  I  had  not  even  read; 
and  he  was  equally  at  sea  in  the  old  books  that 
seemed  to  me  the  most  vital  and  profound. 
I  discovered  that  the  art  that  he  preferred  was 
a  kind  of  brilliant  impressionism.  He  did  not 
care  much  about  the  truth  of  it  to  life;  the 
desirable  quality  seemed  to  him  to  be  a  sort  of 
arresting  daring  of  statement.  He  was  not 
a  narrow-minded  man  at  all;  he  had  read  a 
great  many  books,  both  old  and  new,  but  he 
valued  specious  qualities  above  everything, 
and  books  which  seemed  to  me  to  be  like  the 
crackling  of  thorns  under  a  pot  seemed  to  him 


254  The  Silent  Isle 

to  be  the  glowing  heart  of  the  fire.  The  weak- 
ness of  my  young  friend's  case  lay,  I  thought, 
in  the  fact  that  he  not  only  undervalued  ex- 
perience, but  that  he  evidently  did  not  believe 
that  experience  could  have  anything  to  say  to 
him.  With  the  swift  insight  of  youth,  he  had 
discounted  all  that,  and  growing  older  appeared 
to  him  to  be  a  mere  stiffening  and  hardening 
of  prejudices.  Where  he  seemed  to  me  to 
fail  was  in  any  appreciation  of  tender,  simple, 
wistful  things ;  as  I  grow  older,  I  feel  the  pathetic 
charm  of  life,  its  hints,  its  sorrow,  its  silence, 
its  infinite  dreams,  its  darkening  horizon,  more 
and  more  acutely.  Of  all  this  he  was  im- 
patient. His  idea  was  to  rejoice  in  his  strength; 
he  loved,  I  felt,  the  sparkling  facets  of  the  gem, 
the  dazzling  broken  reflections,  rather  than 
its  inner  heart  of  light.  The  question  which 
pressed  on  me  with  a  painful  insistence  was 
this:  "Was  he  wholly  in  the  right?  was  I  wholly 
in  the  wrong?"  I  am  inclined,  of  course,  to 
believe  that  men  do  their  best  artistic  work  in 
their  youth,  while  they  are  passionately  just, 
charmingly  indiscreet,  relentlessly  severe;  be- 
fore they  have  learnt  the  art  of  compromise  or 
the  force  of  limitations.  I  suppose  that  I, 
like  all  other  middle-aged  writers,  am  tempted 
to  think  that  my  own  youth  is  miraculously 
prolonged;  that  I  have  not  lost  in  fire  what  I 
have   gained  in   patience   and   width   of  view. 


A  Modern  Young  Man       255 

But  he  would  believe  that  I  have  lost  the  glow, 
and  that  what  seems  to  me  to  be  gentle  and 
beautiful  experience  is  but  the  closing  in  of 
weariness  and  senility.  I  have  often  thought 
myself  that  an  increase  of  accomplishment  goes 
hand-in-hand  with  an  increased  tameness  of 
spirit.  And  the  most  pathetic  of  all  writers 
are,  to  my  mind,  those  whose  mastery  of  their 
art  grows  as  the  initial  impulse  declines.  But 
my  young  friend  appeared  to  me  to  value  only 
prodigal  and  fantastic  vigour,  and  to  prefer  the 
sword-dance  to  the  minuet. 

I  began  to  perceive  at  last  that  he  was  feel- 
ing as  Hamlet  did  when  the  bones  of  Yorick 
were  unearthed;  with  a  kind  of  luxurious  pity 
for  my  mouldering  conditions;  touched,  per- 
haps, a  little  by  the  thought  that  I  was  ex- 
cluded from  the  bright  and  brave  shows  of  earth, 
and  sadly  conscious  of  the  odour  of  corruption. 
I  felt  as  he  strolled  with  me  round  my  garden 
on  the  following  morning  that  he  was  regarding 
my  paltry,  unadventurous  life  with  a  sincere 
pity,  as  the  life  of  one  who  had  stolen  from  the 
brisk  encounters  of  wit  and  revelry  to  a  quiet 
bedroom  and  a  basin  of  gruel.  And  yet  the 
curious  thing  was  that  I  felt  no  kind  of  resent- 
ment about  it  at  all.  I  did  not  envy  him  his 
youth  and  his  pride;  indeed,  I  felt  glad  to  have 
escaped  from  it,  if  I  was  like  what  he  was  at  his 
age.     The  world  seemed  full  to  me  of  a  whole 


256  The  Silent  Isle 

range  of  fine  sensations,  gentle  secrets,  remote 
horizons,  of  which  he  had  no  perception.  In- 
deed, I  think  he  despised  my  whole  conception 
of  patient  and  faithful  art.  His  idea  rather 
was  that  one  should  not  spend  much  time  over 
work,  but  that  one  should  break  at  intervals 
into  a  spurting,  fizzing  flame,  and  ascend  like 
a  rocket  over  the  heads  of  the  crowd,  discharg- 
ing a  shower  of  golden  stars. 

I  may,  of  course,  be  only  coming  down  like  a 
burnt-out  stick;  and  this  is  where  the  humilia- 
tion lies;  but  I  feel  rather  as  if  I  were  soaring 
to  worlds  unknown:  though  perhaps,  after  all, 
that  is  only  one  of  the  happy  delusions,  the 
gentle  compensations,  which  God  showers  down 
so  plentifully  upon  the  middle-aged. 


XXXVII 

I  have  had  two  visitors  lately  who  have  set 
me  reflecting  upon  the  odd  social  habits  of  the 
men  of  my  nation.  They  were  not  unusual 
experiences — indeed  I  think  they  may  fairly 
be  called  typical. 

One  of  these  was  a  man  who  invited  him- 
self to  come  and  see  me;  the  excuse,  a  small 
matter  of  business;  but  he  added  that  we  had 
many  common  friends,  that  he  had  read  my 
books,  and  much  wished  to  make  my  acquaint- 
ance. 

He  came  down  to  luncheon  and  to  spend  the 
afternoon.  He  was  a  tall,  handsome,  well- 
dressed  man,  with  a  courteous,  conventional 
manner,  but  every  inch  a  gentleman.  He  had  a 
perfect  social  ease ;  he  began  by  paying  me  rather 
trite  compliments,  saying  that  he  found  my 
books  extremely  sympathetic,  and  that  I  con- 
stantly put  feelings  into  words  which  he  had 
always  had  and  which  he  had  never  been  able 
to  express.  Then  we  turned  to  our  business  and 
finished  it  in  five  minutes.  It  now  remained 
to  fill  the  remainder  of  the  time.  We  strolled 
17  257 


258  The  Silent  Isle 

round  the  garden;  we  lunched;  we  strolled 
again.  We  had  an  early  tea,  and  I  walked 
down  to  the  station  with  him.  I  had  thought 
that  perhaps  he  wished  to  discuss  some  of  the 
topics  on  which  I  had  written  in  my  books; 
but  he  did  not  appear  to  have  any  such  wish. 
He  had  lately  taken  a  house  himself  in  the  coun- 
try; and  he  appeared  to  wish  to  tell  me  about 
that.  I  was  delighted  to  hear  about  it,  because 
I  am  always  interested  to  hear  how  other 
people  live;  but  I  began  to  be  surprised  when 
I  discovered  that  this  seemed  to  be  the  only 
thing  he  wished  to  talk  about.  He  described 
the  house,  the  garden,  the  village,  the  neigh- 
bours; he  described  his  mode  of  life,  his  parties, 
the  things  he  said  to  other  people,  the  visits  he 
paid.  I  became  a  mute  listener.  Occasionally 
I  assented  or  asked  a  question ;  but  if  I  attempted 
to  contribute  to  the  conversation  he  became 
restive  and  bored;  so  I  merely  let  him  have  his 
head,  and  he  talked  on.  I  will  confess  that  I 
derived  a  good  deal  of  entertainment  from  my 
companion,  for  he  was  a  shrewd  and  observant 
man.  I  do  not  think  I  ever  learnt  so  much 
about  an  entire  stranger  in  so  short  a  time. 
I  even  knew  what  he  had  for  breakfast  and  what 
he  drank  with  his  luncheon.  When  we  said 
good-bye  at  the  station,  he  said  that  he  had  spent 
a  very  pleasant  day,  and  I  am  sure  it  was  the 
truth;  he  pressed  me  to  visit  him  with  much 


A  Conventionalist  259 

cordiality,  and  said  that  it  had  given  him  great 
pleasure  to  make  my  acquaintance;  we  bowed 
and  smiled  and  waved  our  hands,  and  the  train 
moved  out  of  the  station. 

The  surprising  thing  is  that  it  never  seemed 
to  occur  to  him  that  he  had  not  made  my  ac- 
quaintance at  all.  He  had  seen  my  house, 
indeed,  but  every  detail  that  he  observed  had 
suggested  to  him  some  superior  detail  in  his 
own  house.  He  had  certainly  allowed  me  to 
make  his  acquaintance,  but  that  had  not  been 
the  professed  object  of  his  visit.  He  could 
not  have  talked  more  obligingly  if  I  had  been 
an  interviewer  who  had  desired  to  write  his 
biography.  I  do  not  believe  that  it  had  ever 
crossed  his  mind  that  the  occasion  had  been 
anything  but  a  complete  success.  His  enjoy- 
ment was  evidently  to  converse,  and  he  had  con- 
versed unintermittently  for  several  hours.  The 
man  was  an  egoist,  of  course,  but  he  had  not 
talked  exclusively  about  himself.  Much  of 
his  talk  had  been  devoted  to  other  people,  but 
they  were  all  of  them  the  people  whom  he  saw 
in  his  own  private  mirror.  I  have  no  doubt 
that  for  the  time  being  I  was  a  figure  in  his 
dreams,  and  that  I  shall  be  described  with  the 
same  minuteness  to  the  unhappy  recipients  of  his 
confidences  who  are  now  awaiting  him  at  din- 
ner,— at  which  I  may  mention  he  always 
drinks  whisky-and-seltzer. 


260  The  Silent  Isle 

I  do  not  mean  that  every  one  is  like  this; 
but  there  are  really  a  larger  number  of  people 
in  the  world  than  I  like  to  think  whose  delight 
it  is  not  to  perceive  but  to  relate.  The  odd 
thing  is  that  my  friend  should  think  it  neces- 
sary to  preface  his  meeting  with  courteous 
formulas,  which  I  suppose  are  merely  liturgi- 
cal, like  the  Dominus  vobiscum,  relating  to  what 
a  polite  Frenchman  the  other  day  called  voire 
presence  et  voire  precieux  concours. 

It  is  really  impossible  to  convey  anything 
to  such  people;  in  fact,  it  is  almost  impossible 
to  communicate  with  them  at  all.  "Never 
tell  people  how  you  are,"  as  a  trenchant  lady 
of  my  acquaintance  said  to  me  the  other  day; 
"  they  don 't  want  to  know. " 

I  think  that  the  society  of  people  who  do 
want  to  know,  and  who  ply  one  with  questions 
as  to  one's  tastes  and  habits,  are  almost  more 
trying  than  the  purely  narrative  people,  and 
induce  a  subtle  sense  of  moral  hypochondria. 
The  perfect  mixture,  which  is  not  a  common 
one,  is  that  of  the  person  who  both  desires 
to  know  and  is  willing  to  illustrate  one's  ex- 
perience by  his  own.  Then  there  is  a  still 
more  inexplicable  class — the  people  who  go 
greedily  to  entertainments,  come  early  and  go 
late,  who  seem  to  wish  neither  to  learn  nor  to 
communicate,  but  sit  staring  and  tongue-tied. 
The  inveterate  talker  is  the  least  tiresome  of  the 


Give  and  Take  261 

three  undesirable  types,  because  one  at  least 
learns  something  of  another's  point  of  view. 
But  the  danger  of  general  society  to  a  person 
like  myself,  who  has  a  desire  to  play  a  certain 
part  in  talk,  is  that  sometimes  one  is  tied  to  an 
uncompromising  person  as  to  a  post  for  execu- 
tion. I  love  a  decent  equality  in  the  matter 
of  talk.  I  want  to  hear  other  people's  views 
and  to  contrast  my  own  with  them.  I  do  not 
wish  to  lie,  like  a  merchant  vessel  near  a  pirate 
ship,  and  to  be  fired  into  at  intervals  until  I 
surrender.  Neither  do  I  want  to  do  all  the 
firing  myself. 

The  odd  thing  is  that  people,  like  the  saints 
in  the  psalm,  are  so  joyful  in  glory!  They 
seem  entirely  content  with  their  aims  and 
methods,  and  not  even  dimly  to  suspect  that 
they  might  be  enlarged  or  improved.  Some  of 
them  want  to  talk,  and  some  of  them  seem  not 
even  to  wish  to  be  talked  to;  a  very  few  to  listen, 
and  a  small  and  happy  percentage  desire  both 
to  give  and  to  take. 

Well,  I  suppose  that  I  ought  to  be  glad  that 
my  visitor  enjoyed  himself;  but  I  cannot  help 
feeling  that  my  coachman  would  have  done 
as  well  as  myself — indeed  better,  for  he  is  a 
pleasantly  taciturn  man,  and  would  not  even 
have  given  way  to  rebellious  thoughts. 

The  impression  left  on  my  mind  by  my 
visitor   is   just   as   though   a   grasshopper   had 


262  The  Silent  Isle 

leapt  upon  my  window-sill  from  the  garden- 
bed,  and  sate  there  a  while,  with  his  blank 
eyes,  his  long,  impassive,  horse-like  face,  twid- 
dling his  whisks  and  sawing  out  a  whizzing  note 
with  his  dry  arm.  It  would  please  me  to  ob- 
serve his  dry  manners,  his  unsympathetic  and 
monotonous  cries;  but  neither  visitor  nor  grass- 
hopper would  seem  within  the  reach  of  any 
human  emotion,  except  a  mild  curiosity,  and 
even  amusement.  Indeed,  the  only  differ- 
ence is  that  if  I  had  clapped  my  hands  the  grass- 
hopper would  have  gone  off  like  a  skip-jack, 
and  after  a  sky-high  leap  would  have  landed 
struggling  among  the  laurels;  while  the  more  I 
clapped  my  hands  at  my  visitor,  the  longer  he 
would  have  been  delighted  to  stay. 

My  other  visitor,  who  came  a  day  or  two 
later,  was  a  very  different  type  of  man.  He 
was  a  young,  vigorous,  healthy  creature,  who 
had  lately  gone  as  a  master  to  a  big  public 
school.  He  came  at  my  invitation,  being  the 
son  of  an  old  friend  of  mine.  He,  too,  spent  a 
day  with  me,  and  left  on  my  mind  a  very  dif- 
ferent impression,  namely,  that  I  should  grow 
to  respect  and  like  him  the  more  that  I  saw  of 
him.  There  was  nothing  insincere  or  lacking 
in  genuineness  about  him.  I  felt  his  solidity, 
his  loyalty,  his  uprightness  very  strongly.  But 
he  exhibited  on  first  acquaintance — due  no 
doubt    to    a    sturdy    British    shyness — all    the 


A  Public-School  Master      263 

qualities  that  make  us  so  detested  upon  the 
Continent,  and  that  lead  the  more  expansive 
foreigner,  who  only  sees  the  superficial  aspect  of 
the  Englishman,  to  think  of  us  as  a  brutal  nation. 
He  was  an  odd  mixture  of  awkwardness  and  com- 
placency, a  desire  to  be  courteous  struggling 
with  a  desire  to  show  his  independence;  he  had 
no  ease  of  manner,  no  bonhomie,  but  a  gruff 
and  ugly  kind  of  jocosity,  which  I  am  sure  was 
not  really  natural  to  him,  but  was  his  protest 
against  the  possibility  of  my  considering  him 
to  be  shy.  He  seemed  anxious  to  show  that  he 
was  as  good  a  man  as  myself,  which  I  was 
quite  ready  to  take  for  granted.  He  jested 
about  the  dulness  of  the  country;  said  that  he 
thought  it  made  people  jolly  mouldy.  He  did 
not  see  that  it  was  a  pity  to  press  that  fact 
upon  me;  the  truth  was  that  he  was  think- 
ing of  himself  for  the  time  being,  though  he 
was  no  egoist.  And  whereas  the  courtly  egoist 
pays  you  compliments  first  and  then  returns 
to  a  more  congenial  self -contemplation,  my  burly 
young  friend  would,  I  have  not  the  slightest 
doubt,  grow  more  companionable  and  consider- 
ate every  day  that  one  knew  him.  But  his 
manner  was  the  manner  of  the  common-room 
and  the  cricket  field,  that  odd  British  humour, 
that,  without  meaning  to  be  unkind,  thrusts 
its  darts  clumsily  in  the  weak  points  of  the 
armour.     It  is  this,  I  think,  that  makes  English 


264  The  Silent  Isle 

public-school  life  so  good  a  discipline,  if  one 
unlearns  its  methods  as  soon  as  one  has  done 
with  it,  because  it  makes  men  tolerant  of 
criticism  and  even  ridicule;  its  absence  of  senti- 
ment makes  them  tough ;  its  absence  of  courtesy- 
makes  them  strong. 

But  I  did  not  like  it  at  the  time.  He  sur- 
veyed my  belongings  with  good-humoured  con- 
tempt. He  said  he  did  not  care  for  fiddling 
about  a  garden  himself,  and  at  my  fowl-house 
he  jested  of  fleas.  In  my  library  he  said  he 
had  no  time  for  poking  about  with  books.  I 
asked  him  about  his  life  at  P ,  and  he  as- 
sured me  it  was  not  half  bad;  that  the  boys 
were  all  right  if  you  knew  how  to  take  them; 
and  he  told  me  some  pleasant  stories  of  some 
of  his  inefficient  colleagues.  He  said  that  a 
good  deal  of  the  work  was  rot,  but  that  they 
had  a  first-rate  cricket  pitch,  and  a  splendid  Pro. 

Yet  this  young  man  took  a  high  classical 
degree,  and  is,  I  know  for  a  fact,  an  admirable 
schoolmaster,  sensible,  effective,  and  even  wise; 
he  makes  his  boys  work,  and  work  contentedly, 
and  he  is  not  only  popular  but  really  trusted 
by  the  boys.  He  would  never  do  a  mean 
thing  or  an  unkind  thing;  he  is  absolutely 
manly,  straightforward,  and  honourable,  and  I 
gladly  admit  that  a  man 's  behaviour  on  a  social 
occasion  is  a  very  trivial  thing  beside  these 
greater  qualities.     But  what  is  it,  then,  which 


A  Public-School  Master       265 

causes  this  curious  gruffness  and  rudeness, 
this  apparent  assumption .  that  every  one  is 
slightly  grotesque,  low-minded,  and  dishonest? 
For  the  style  of  humour  which  this  type  de- 
velops is  the  humour  that  consists  in  calling 
attention  in  public  to  any  deficiencies  that  you 
may  observe  in  a  man 's  appearance,  manner,  and 
surroundings,  and  also  taking  for  granted  that 
his  motives  for  action  are  bad.  I  do  not  mean 
to  say  that  my  young  friend  considers  me 
grotesque  or  dishonest,  but  his  idea  of  humour  is 
to  make  a  pretence  of  thinking  so.  He  would 
be  distressed  if  he  thought  that  he  had  given 
me  pain;  his  intention  is  to  diffuse  a  genial 
good-humour  into  the  scene;  and  if  he  were 
bantered  in  the  same  way,  he  would  take  it 
as  an  evidence  of  friendly  feeling. 

The  truth  is  that  it  is  really  schoolboy  humour 
belatedly  prolonged.  Vituperation  is  the  school- 
boy's  idea  of  friendly  banter.  The  schoolboy 
does  not  so  much  consider  the  feelings  of  his 
victim  as  his  companions'  need  of  amusement. 
But  I  am  sure  that  the  tendency  nowadays  is, 
somehow  or  other,  to  prolong  the  hobbledehoy 
days.  There  is  so  much  more  organisation  of 
everything  at  schools  that  young  men  remain 
boys  longer  than  they  used  to  do.  Partly, 
too,  in  the  case  of  this  young  man,  it  arises 
from  his  never  having  had  a  change  of  atmos- 
phere.    He  remained  a  jolly  schoolboy  till  the 


266  The  Silent  Isle 

end  of  his  University  days,  and  then  he  went 
back  to  the  society  of  schoolboys.  He  is  simply 
undeveloped;  and  the  mistake  he  makes  is  to 
consider  himself  a  man  of  the  world. 

But  partly,  too,  it  arises  from  national  char- 
acteristics, the  preference  for  bluntness  and 
frankness  and  outspokenness;  the  tendency  to 
believe  that  a  display  of  courtesy  and  emotion 
and  consideration  is  essentially  insincere.  One 
does  not  at  all  want  to  get  rid  of  frankness  and 
outspokenness.  Combined  with  a  certain  de- 
gree of  deference  and  sympathy,  they  are  the 
most  delightful  graces  in  the  world.  But 
though  the  attitude  which  I  have  been  describ- 
ing prides  itself  upon  being  above  all  things 
unaffected,  it  is  in  reality  a  highly  affected 
mood,  because  it  is  all  based  on  a  kind  of  false 
shame.  Such  a  man  as  my  young  friend  does 
not  really  say  what  he  thinks,  and  very  rarely 
thinks  what  he  says.  He  is,  as  I  have  said, 
a  high-minded,  intelligent,  and  sensible  man; 
but  he  thinks  it  priggish  to  let  his  real  opinions 
be  known,  and  thus  is  priggish  without  per- 
ceiving it.  The  essence  of  priggishness  is  the 
disapproving  attitude,  and  it  is  priggish  to  wish 
to  appear  superior;  but  my  young  friend,  in 
the  back  of  his  mind,  does  think  himself  the  su- 
perior of  courteous,  sympathetic,  and  emotional 
persons. 

And  thus   I  did  not  particularly  enjoy  his 


A  Public-School  Master      267 

visit,  because  I  could  not  feel  at  ease  with  my 
visitor.  I  could  not  say  frankly  what  I  thought, 
but  had  to  select  topics  which  I  thought  he 
would  consider  unaffected. 

I  think,  in  fact,  that  we  pay  too  high  a  price 
for  our  British  reticence:  perhaps  we  keep  a 
few  foolish  and  gushing  people  in  order,  stifle 
effusiveness,  and  dry  up  unctuousness ;  but  we 
do  so  at  the  price  of  silencing  a  much  larger 
number  of  simple  and  direct  people,  and  lose 
much  variety  of  characteristics  and  interchange 
of  sincere  opinions  thereby! 


XXXVIII 

There  are  some  people  in  the  world,  I  am  sure, 
who  are  born  solitary,  who  are  not  conscious 
of  any  closeness  of  relationship  with  others. 
They  are  not  necessarily  ungenial  people — in- 
deed they  sometimes  have  a  great  deal  of  ex- 
ternal geniality;  but  when  it  is  a  question  of 
forming  a  closer  relationship,  they  are  alarmed 
and  depressed  by  the  responsibility  which 
attaches  to  it,  and  become  colder  instead  of 
warmer,  the  deeper  and  more  imperative  that 
the  claims  upon  them  become.  Such  people 
are  not  as  a  rule  unhappy,  because  they  are 
spared  the  pain  which  arises  from  the  strain  of 
intimacy,  and  because  loss  and  bereavement  do 
not  rend  and  devastate  their  hearts.  They 
miss  perhaps  the  best  kind  of  happiness,  but 
they  do  not  suffer  from  the  penalties  that  dog 
the  great  affections  of  men. 

I  had  an  old  friend,  who  was  a  boy  at  school 
with  me,  who  was  of  this  type.  He  was  es- 
sentially solitary  in  spirit,  though  he  was 
amiable  and  sociable  enough.  There  can  be 
no  harm  in  my  telling  the  story  of  his  life,  as 
the  actors  in  it  are  all  long  ago  dead. 

268 


A  Solitary  269 

He  was  at  the  University  with  me,  though  not 
at  the  same  College;  I  think  that  owing  to  a 
certain  similarity  of  tastes,  and  perhaps  of 
temperament,  I  was  his  nearest  and  most 
intimate  friend.  He  confided  in  me  as  far  as  he 
confided  in  any  one ;  but  I  always  felt  that  there 
was  a  certain  fence  behind  which  I  was  never 
admitted;  and  probably  it  was  because  I  never 
showed  any  signs  of  desiring  to  claim  more 
than  he  was  ready  to  give  in  the  way  of  intimacy 
that  he  found  himself  very  much  at  his  ease 
with  me. 

A  year  or  two  after  he  left  the  University  I 
heard  from  him,  to  my  great  surprise,  that  he 
was  engaged  to  be  married.  I  went  up  to  see 
him  in  town,  where  he  was  then  living,  and  he 
took  me  to  see  his  fiancee.  She  was  one  of  the 
most  beautiful  and  charming  creatures  I  have 
ever  seen,  and  the  two  were  evidently,  as  the 
phrase  goes,  very  much  in  love.  I  must  say 
that  my  friend  was  superficially  a  most  attrac- 
tive fellow;  he  had  a  commanding  presence, 
and  great  personal  beauty,  and  there  was  a 
certain  air  of  mystery  about  him  which  must, 
I  think,  have  added  to  the  charm.  They  were 
married,  and  for  a  time,  to  all  appearances, 
enjoyed  great  happiness.  A  child  was  born 
to  them,  a  daughter.  I  saw  them  at  intervals, 
and  my  impression  was  that  my  friend  had 
found  the  one  thing  that  he  wanted,  the  com- 


270  The  Silent  Isle 

panionship  of  a  loving,  beautiful,  and  intelli- 
gent woman. 

It  was  in  the  course  of  the  year  after  the 
birth  of  the  child  that  I  became  aware  that 
something  had  gone  wrong;  a  shadow  seemed 
to  have  fallen  upon  them.  I  became  aware 
in  the  course  of  a  few  days  which  I  spent  with 
them  in  a  little  house  by  the  sea,  which  they 
had  taken  for  the  summer,  that  all  was  not 
well.  My  friend  seemed  to  me  distrait  and 
heavy-hearted;  his  wife  seemed  to  be  patheti- 
cally affectionate  and  anxious.  There  was 
no  indifference  or  harshness  apparent  in  his 
manner  to  her;  indeed,  he  seemed  to  me  to  be 
extraordinarily  considerate  and  tender.  One 
day — we  had  gone  off  in  the  morning  for  a  long 
ramble  on  the  cliffs,  leaving  his  wife  in  the  com- 
pany of  an  old  school  friend  of  hers  who  had 
come  to  stay  with  them — he  suddenly  said  to 
me,  with  a  determined  air,  that  he  wished  to 
consult  me  on  a  point.  I  expressed  the  ut- 
most readiness  to  be  of  use,  and  wondered  in  an 
agitated  way  what  the  matter  could  be;  but  he 
was  silent  for  so  long — we  were  sitting  on  a  grassy 
headland  high  above  a  broad,  calm  expanse  of 
summer  sea — that  I  wondered  if  he  had  re- 
pented of  his  resolution.  At  last  he  spoke.  I 
will  not  attempt  to  reproduce  his  words,  but 
he  said  to  me,  with  an  astonishing  calmness,  that 
he  found  that  he  was  ceasing  to  care  for  his 


A  Solitary  271 

wife:  he  said  very  quietly  that  it  was  not  that 
he  cared  for  any  one  else,  but  that  his  marriage 
had  been  a  mistake;  that  he  had  engaged  him- 
self in  a  moment  of  passion,  and  that  this  had 
subsequently  evaporated.  In  the  days  of  his 
first  love  he  had  poured  out  his  heart  to  his  wife, 
and  now  he  no  longer  desired  to  do  so;  he  did 
not  wish  any  more  to  share  his  thoughts  with  her, 
and  he  was  aware  that  she  was  conscious  of  this ; 
he  said  that  it  was  infinitely  pathetic  and  dis- 
tressing to  him  to  see  the  efforts  that  she  made 
to  regain  his  confidence,  and  that  he  tried  as 
far  as  he  could  to  talk  to  her  freely,  but  that  he 
had  no  longer  any  sincere  desire  to  do  it,  and 
that  the  effort  was  acutely  painful;  he  was,  he 
said,  deeply  distressed  that  she  should  be  bound 
to  him,  and  he  indicated  that  he  was  fully 
aware  that  her  own  affection  for  him  had  under- 
gone no  change,  and  that  it  was  not  likely  to 
do  so.  He  asked  me  what  he  had  better  do. 
Should  he  continue  to  struggle  with  his  re- 
luctance to  communicate  his  feelings  to  her; 
should  he  endeavour  to  make  her  acquiesce  in 
altered  relations;  should  he  tell  her  frankly 
what  had  happened;  or  should  he — he  confessed 
that  he  would  prefer  this  himself — arrange  for  a 
virtual  separation?  "I  feel,"  he  said,  "that  I 
have  lost  the  only  thing  in  the  world  I  really  care 
about — my  liberty."  It  sounds,  as  I  thus 
describe   the   situation,    as    though   my   friend 


2^2  The  Silent  Isle 

was  acting  in  an  entirely  selfish  and  cold- 
blooded manner;  but  I  confess  that  it  did  not 
strike  me  in  that  light  at  the  time.  He  spoke 
in  a  mood  of  dreary  melancholy,  as  a  man 
might  speak  who  had  committed  a  great  mis- 
take, and  felt  himself  unequal  to  the  respon- 
sibilities he  had  assumed.  He  spoke  of  his  wife 
with  a  deep  compassionateness,  as  though 
intensely  alive  to  the  sorrow  that  he  had  in- 
considerately inflicted  upon  her.  He  con- 
demned himself  unsparingly,  and  said  frankly 
that  he  had  known  all  the  time  that  he  was 
doing  wrong  in  allowing  himself  to  be  carried 
away  by  his  passion.  "I  hoped,"  he  said, 
"that  it  might  have  been  the  awakening  of  a 
new  life  in  me,  and  that  it  would  be  an  initia- 
tion for  me  into  the  inner  life  of  the  world, 
from  which  I  had  always  been  excluded."  He 
went  on  to  say  that  he  would  make  any 
sacrifice  he  could  for  her  happiness — adding 
gravely,  looking  at  me  with  a  strange  air, 
that  if  he  thought  that  she  would  be  the  hap- 
pier if  he  killed  himself,  he  would  not  hesitate 
to  do  it.  "But  live  as  we  are  living,"  he 
said,  "I  cannot.  My  life  has  become  a  con- 
tinual and  wearing  drama,  in  which  I  can  never 
be  myself,  but  am  condemned  to  play  an  unreal 
part." 

I  made  him  the  only  answer  that  was  pos- 
sible— namely,    that    I    thought   that    he    had 


Limitations  273 

undertaken  a  certain  responsibility  and  that  he 
was  bound  in  honour  to  fulfil  it.  I  added  that  I 
thought  that  the  whole  of  his  future  peace  of 
mind  depended  upon  his  rising  to  the  situation, 
even  though  it  were  to  be  a  martyrdom.  I 
said  that  I  thought,  believing  as  I  did  in  the 
providential  guidance  of  individual  lives,  that 
it  was  the  crisis  of  his  fate;  that  he  had  the 
opportunity  of  playing  a  noble  part. 

"Yes,"  he  said  dispassionately,  "if  it  was 
the  case  of  a  single  action  of  the  kind  that  is 
usually  called  heroic,  I  think  I  could  do  it; 
what  I  can't  say  that  I  think  I  am  equal  to  is 
the  making  of  my  life  into  one  long  pretence; 
and  what  is  more,  it  will  not  be  success- 
ful— I  cannot  hope  to  deceive  her  day  after 
day." 

"Well,"  I  said,  "it  is  a  terrible  position;  but 
I  think  you  are  bound  to  make  the  attempt." 

"Thanks,"  he  said;  "you  don't  mind  my 
having  asked  you?  I  thought  it  would  perhaps 
make  things  clearer,  and  I  think  that  on  the 
whole  I  agree  with  you."  He  then  began  to 
talk  of  other  matters  with  the  utmost  calm- 
ness. The  sequel  is  a  strange  one;  what  he 
said  to  his  wife  I  do  not  know,  but  for  the  few 
days  that  I  spent  with  them  there  was  a  very 
different  feeling  in  the  air;  he  had  contrived 
to  reassure  her,  and  her  anxiety  seemed  for  a 
time,  at  all  events,  to  be  at  an  end.  A  few  days 
18 


274  The  Silent  Isle 

after  I  left  them,  the  child  fell  ill,  and  died  within 
a  week.  The  shock  was  too  much  for  the  wife, 
and  within  a  month  she  followed  the  child  to 
the  grave.  My  friend  was  left  alone;  and  it 
seemed  to  me  like  a  ghastly  fulfilment  of  his 
desires.  I  was  with  him  at  the  funeral  of  his 
wife;  is  it  terrible  to  relate  that  there  was  a 
certain  tranquillity  about  him  that  suggested 
the  weariness  of  one  off  whom  a  strain  had  been 
lif  ed?  But  his  own  life  was  to  be  a  short  one; 
about  two  years  after  he  himself  died  very 
suddenly,  as  he  had  always  desired  to  die.  I 
saw  him  often  in  the  interval ;  he  never  recurred 
to  the  subject,  and  I  never  liked  to  reopen  it. 
Only  once  did  he  speak  to  me  of  her.  "I 
feel,"  he  said  to  me  on  one  occasion,  quite 
suddenly,  "that  the  two  are  waiting  for  me 
somewhere,  and  that  they  understand;  and  my 
hope  is  that  when  I  am  freed  from  this  vile 
body  I  shall  be  different — perhaps  worthy  of 
their  love ;  it  is  all  within  me  somewhere,  though 
I  cannot  get  at  it.  Don't  think  of  me,"  he 
said,  turning  to  me,  "as  a  very  brutal  person. 
I  have  tried  my  best;  but  I  think  that  the  capac- 
ity for  real  feeling  has  been  denied  me." 

It  is  a  very  puzzling  episode;  what  I  feel  is 
that  though  we  always  recognise  the  limitations 
of  people  physically  and  mentally,  we  do  not 
sufficiently  recognise  the  moral  and  emotional 
limitations.     We  think  of  the  will  as  a  dom- 


Limitations  275 

inant  factor  in  people's  lives,  as  a  thing  that 
we  can  all  make  use  of  if  we  choose;  we  forget 
that  it  is  just  as  strictly  limited  and  conditioned 
as  all  our  other  faculties. 


XXXIX 

I  have  an  acquaintance  at  Cambridge,  John 
Meyrick  by  name,  who  visits  me  here  at  inter- 
vals, and  is  to  me  an  object  of  curious  interest. 
He  is  a  Fellow  and  Lecturer  of  his  College. 
He  came  up  there  on  a  scholarship  from  a  small 
school.  He  worked  hard;  he  was  a  moderate 
oar;  he  did  not  make  many  friends,  but  he  was 
greatly  respected  for  a  sort  of  quiet  directness 
and  common-sense.  He  never  put  himself 
forward,  but  when  it  fell  to  him  to  do  anything 
he  did  it  with  confidence  and  discretion.  He 
had  an  excellent  head  for  business,  and  was 
Secretary  or  Treasurer  of  most  of  the  College 
institutions.  After  taking  an  excellent  degree 
he  was  elected  to  a  Fellowship.  He  took 
advantage  of  this  to  go  abroad  for  a  year  to 
Germany,  and  returned  a  first-rate  German 
scholar,  with  a  considerable  knowledge  of  Ger- 
man methods  of  education;  and  was  shortly 
afterwards  given  a  lectureship.  I  believe  he  is 
one  of  the  best  lecturers  in  the  place;  he  knows 
his  subject,  and  keeps  abreast  of  it.  He  is 
extraordinarily    clear,    lucid,    and    decisive    in 

276 


A  Don  277 

statement,  and  though  he  is  an  advanced  scholar, 
he  is  an  extremely  practical  one.  His  men 
always  do  well.  I  made  his  acquaintance  over 
a  piece  of  business,  and  found  him  friendly  and 
pleasant.  He  is  fond  of  taking  long,  solitary 
walks  on  Sunday,  as  he  seldom  has  time  for 
exercise  in  the  week;  and  I  asked  him  to  come 
over  and  see  me;  he  walked  from  Cambridge 
one  morning,  arriving  for  luncheon,  and  I 
accompanied  him  part  of  the  way  back  in  the 
afternoon.  Since  that  time  he  generally  comes 
over  once  or  twice  a  term.  I  do  not  quite 
know  his  object  in  doing  this,  because  I  always 
feel  that  he  has  a  sort  of  polite  contempt  for 
my  ways  of  life  and  habits  of  thought;  but 
it  makes  a  good  goal  for  a  long  walk,  and, 
moreover,  he  likes  to  know  different  types  of 
people. 

He  is  now  about  forty-five.  In  appearance  he 
is  trim  and  small,  and  gives  the  impression  of 
being,  so  to  speak,  in  first-rate  training.  He 
has  a  firm,  pale  face,  of  which  the  only  dis- 
tinction is  that  it  has  a  look  of  quiet  strength 
and  self-confidence.  He  has  rather  thick  dark 
hair,  and  a  close-cropped  beard,  sprinkled  with 
grey;  strong,  ugly  hands,  and  serviceable  feet. 
His  dress  is  precise  and  deliberate,  but  in  no 
particular  fashion.  He  wears  a  rather  stiff 
dark  suit,  low  collars,  a  black  tie,  a  soft  black 
hat,  and  strong  elastic-sided  boots.     If  one  met 


278  The  Silent  Isle 

him  in  the  road,  one  would  think  him  a  Board- 
School  Master. 

He  is  very  considerate  and  polite;  for  in- 
stance, if  he  is  coming  over  he  always  lets  me 
know  a  few  days  before,  so  that  I  may  get  his 
post-card  forwarded  to  me  if  I  happen  to  be 
away.  If  the  day  is  wet  or  if  he  is  prevented 
from  coming,  he  invariably  wires  in  the  morn- 
ing to  let  me  know  that  he  will  not  appear. 

He  has  one  of  the  best-filled  and  most  service- 
able minds  I  know;  though  he  is  overwhelmed 
by  business  of  all  kinds — he  is  Secretary  to  two 
or  three  boards — he  always  seems  to  have  read 
everything  and  to  have  a  perfectly  clear-cut 
idea  about  it.  He  does  this  by  the  most  ex- 
traordinarily methodical  use  of  his  time.  He 
rises  early,  disposes  of  his  correspondence, 
never  failing  to  answer  a  letter  as  briefly  as 
possible  the  same  day  that  he  receives  it; 
reads  the  paper;  lectures  and  coaches  all  the 
morning;  attends  meetings  in  the  afternoon; 
coaches  again  till  dinner;  and  after  dinner  reads 
in  his  rooms  till  midnight.  He  seems  to  have 
perfect  bodily  health  and  vigour,  and  he  has 
never  been  known  to  neglect  or  to  defer  anything 
that  he  undertakes.  In  fact,  he  is  a  perfectly 
useful,  competent,  admirable  man. 

His  behaviour  to  every  one  is  exactly  the 
same;  he  treats  everybody,  his  young  men, 
his  colleagues,   his  academical  superiors,   with 


A  Don  279 

the  same  dry  politeness  and  respect.  He  is 
never  shy  or  flustered;  he  found  one  day  here, 
staying  with  me,  a  somewhat  rare  species  of 
visitor,  a  man  of  high  political  distinction,  who 
came  down  to  get  a  quiet  Sunday  to  talk  over 
an  important  article  which  I  happened  to  be 
entrusted  with.  Meyrick's  behaviour  was  un- 
exceptionable: he  was  neither  abrupt  nor 
deferential;  he  was  simply  his  unaffected,  self- 
confident  self. 

I  like  seeing  Meyrick  at  intervals,  because, 
though  he  is  not  really  a  typical  Don  at  all,  he 
is  exactly  the  sort  of  figure  which  would  be 
selected  as  typical  nowadays.  The  days  of  the 
absent-minded,  unkempt,  slatternly,  spectacled, 
owlish  Don  are  over,  and  one  has  instead  a  brisk 
professional  man,  fond  of  business  and  ordered 
knowledge,  who  is  not  in  the  least  a  man  of 
the  world,  but  a  curious  variety  of  it,  a  man  of  a 
small  and  definite  society  who,  on  the  strength 
of  knowing  a  certain  class,  and  of  possessing 
a  certain  savoir  faire,  credits  himself  with  a 
mundane  position  and  enjoys  his  own  self- 
respect. 

But  I  should  be  very  melancholy  if  I  had  to 
spend  a  long  time  in  Meyrick's  company.  In 
the  first  place,  his  views  on  literature  are  directly 
opposed  to  mine.  He  has  a  kind  of  scheme  in 
his  head,  and  classifies  writers  into  accurate 
groups.     He  seems  to  have  no  predilection  and 


280  The  Silent  Isle 

no  admiration  except  for  what  he  calls  import- 
ant writers.  He  has  no  personal  interest  in 
writers  whatever.  He  can  assign  them  their 
exact  places  in  the  development  of  English, 
but  he  never  approaches  an  author  with  the 
reverential  sense  of  drawing  near  to  a  mysterious 
and  divine  secret,  but  rather  with  a  respect  for 
technical  accomplishment.  In  fact,  his  pleasure 
in  dealing  with  an  author  is  the  pleasure  of 
mastering  him  and  classifying  him.  He  puts  a 
new  book  through  its  paces  as  a  horse-dealer 
does  with  a  horse;  he  observes  his  action,  his 
strong  and  weak  points,  and  then  forms  a 
business-like  estimate  of  his  worth. 

It  is  the  same  with  his  treatment  of  people. 
He  has  a  hard  and  shrewd  judgment  of  char- 
acter, and  a  polite  contempt  for  weakness  of 
every  kind.  He  is  a  Radical  by  conviction, 
with  a  strong  sense  of  equal  rights.  Socialism 
he  thinks  unpractical,  and  he  is  interested  in 
movements  rather  than  in  men. 

But  he  seldom  or  never  lets  one  into  his 
confidence  about  people.  If  he  respects  and 
values  a  man  he  says  so  frankly,  but  keeps 
silence  about  the  people  of  whom  he  does  not 
approve.  On  one  of  the  few  occasions  in  which 
I  had  a  peep  into  the  interior  of  his  mind,  I 
was  surprised  to  find  that  he  had  a  strong  class- 
feeling.  He  had  an  obvious  contempt  for  what 
may  be  called  the  upper  class,  and  gave  me  to 


A  Don  281 

understand  that  he  thought  their  sense  of  su- 
periority a  very  false  one.  He  thought  of  them 
simply  as  the  people,  so  to  speak,  in  possession, 
but  entirely  lacking  in  moral  purpose  and  ideal. 
I  said  something  about  the  agreeable,  sym- 
pathetic courtesy  of  well-bred  people,  and  he 
made  it  plain  that  he  regarded  it  as  a  sort  of 
expensive  and  useless  product.  He  had,  I 
found,  a  different  kind  of  contempt  for  the  lower 
classes,  regarding  them  as  thriftless  and  unen- 
terprising. In  fact,  the  professional  middle  class 
seemed  to  him  to  have  a  monopoly  of  the  virtues 
— common-sense,  simplicity,  respectability. 

Two  things  for  which  he  has  no  kind  of  sym- 
pathy are  art  and  music,  which  appear  to  him 
to  be  a  kind  of  harmless  and  elegant  trifling.  I 
am  afraid  that  what  irritates  me  in  his  treat- 
ment of  these  subjects  is  his  cool  and  sensible 
indifference  to  them.  He  never  expresses  the 
least  opposition  to  them,  but  merely  treats 
them  as  purely  negligible  things.  He  is  not 
exactly  complacent,  because  there  is  no  touch 
of  vanity  or  egotism  about  him;  and  then  his 
attitude  is  impossible  to  assail,  because  there 
is  no  assumption  whatever  of  superiority  about 
it.  He  merely  knows  that  he  is  right,  and  he 
has  no  interest  whatever  in  convincing  other  peo- 
ple; when  they  know  better,  when  they  get  rid 
of  their  emotional  prejudices,  they  will  feel, 
he  is  sure,  as  he  does. 


282  The  Silent  Isle 

In  discussing  matters  he  is  not  at  all  a  doc- 
trinaire; he  deals  with  any  objections  that  one 
makes  courteously  and  frankly,  and  even 
covers  his  opponent's  retreat  with  a  polite 
quoting  of  possible  precedents.  Without  be- 
ing a  well-bred  man,  he  is  so  entirely  unpre- 
tentious that  he  could  hold  his  own  in  any 
company.  He  would  sit  next  a  commercial 
traveller  and  talk  to  him  pleasantly,  just  as  he 
would  sit  next  the  King,  if  it  fell  to  his  lot  to 
do  so,  and  talk  without  any  embarrassment. 

I  find  it  hard  to  say  why  it  is  that  a  man  who 
is  so  admirable  in  his  conduct  of  life  and  in  his 
relations  with  others  inspires  me  at  times  with 
so  strange  a  mixture  of  anger  and  terror.  I  am 
angry  because  I  feel  that  he  takes  no  account  of 
many  of  the  best  things  in  the  world;  I  am 
frightened  because  he  is  so  extraordinarily 
strong  and  complete.  If  he  were  to  be  given 
absolute  and  despotic  power,  he  would  arrange 
the  government  of  a  State  on  just  and  equable 
lines;  the  only  tyranny  that  he  would  originate 
would  be  the  tyranny  of  common-sense.  The 
only  thing  which  he  would  be  hard  on  would 
be  unreasonableness  in  any  form.  I  am  very 
fond  of  reasonableness  myself;  I  think  it  a  very 
fine  and  beautiful  quality,  and  I  think  that  it 
wins  probably  the  best  victories  of  the  world. 
But  I  desire  in  the  world  a  certain  driving  force, 
whereas  to  me  Meyrick  only  represents  an  im- 


A  Don  283 

mensely  strong  regulating  force.  When  I  am 
away  from  him  I  think  subordination  and  regu- 
lation are  very  fine  things,  but  when  I  am  with 
him  I  feel  that  my  liberty  is  somehow  strangely 
curtailed.  I  cannot  be  fanciful  or  extravagant 
in  Meyrick's  company;  his  polite  laugh  would  be 
a  disheartening  rebuke;  he  would  think  my 
extravagance  an  agreeable  conversational  orna- 
ment, but  he  would  put  me  down  as  a  man 
unfit  to  be  placed  upon  a  syndicate.  I  do  not 
feel  that  I  am  being  consciously  judged  and 
condemned;  I  simply  feel  that  I  am  being  un- 
consciously estimated,  which  fills  me  with  in- 
explicable rage. 

I  wrote  this  on  Sunday  evening,  having  spent 
an  hour  or  two  in  his  company.  I  can  still 
see  him  as  I  stopped  to  say  farewell  to  him  on 
the  long,  straight  road  leading  to  Cambridge. 
"Going  to  turn  back  here?  Well,  I  must  be 
getting  on — very  good  of  you  to  give  me  luncheon 
— good-bye!"  with  a  little  brisk  smile — he  never 
shakes  hands,  I  must  add,  on  these  occasions. 
I  stood  for  an  instant  to  watch  him  walk  off  at  a 
good  pace  down  the  road.  His  boots  rose  and 
fell  rhythmically,  and  he  put  his  stick  down  at 
regular  intervals.  He  never  turned  his  head, 
but  no  doubt  plunged  into  some  definite  train 
of  thought.  Indeed,  I  have  little  doubt  that 
he  had  arranged  beforehand  exactly  what  he 
would  think  out  when  I  left  him  alone. 


284  The  Silent  Isle 

So  the  little,  trim,  compact  figure  trudged 
away,  like  a  spirit  of  law,  decency,  and  order, 
with  the  long  fields  stretching  to  left  and  right 
with  their  distant  clumps  of  trees.  He  seemed 
to  me  to  be  the  embodiment  of  sensible  civilisa- 
tion, knowing  his  own  mind  perfectly,  a  drill- 
sergeant  of  humanity,  with  a  strong  sense  of 
responsibility  for,  but  no  sympathy  with,  all 
lounging,  fanciful,  and  irresolute  persons.  How 
useful,  how  competent,  how  good,  how  honour- 
able he  was!  What  a  splendid  guide,  mentor, 
and  guardian!  and  yet  I  felt  helplessly  that  he 
possessed  and  desired  none  of  the  things  that 
make  humanity  dear  and  the  world  beauti- 
ful. I  often  feel  very  impatient  with  the  way 
in  which  writers,  and  particularly  clerical  writers, 
use  the  word  spiritual;  it  often  means,  I  feel, 
that  they  are  only  conscious  of  the  entire  in- 
adequacy of  the  motives  for  conduct  that  they 
are  themselves  able  to  supply;  but  the  moment 
that  I  set  eyes  upon  Meyrick,  I  know  what  the 
word  means,  that  it  is  the  one  great  quality 
that,  for  all  his  virtue  and  strength,  he  misses. 
I  do  not  know  what  the  quality  is  exactly, 
but  I  do  know  that  he  is  without  it;  and  in 
the  dry  light  of  Meyrick 's  mind,  I  forgive  all 
muddled  and  irresolute  people  their  sins  and 
foolishnesses,  their  aggravating  incompetence, 
their  practical  inefficacy;  because  I  know  that 
they  have  somehow  in  a  clumsy  way  got  hold 


A  Don  285 

of  the  two  great  principles  that  "The  end  is  not 

yet,"  and  "It  doth  not  yet  appear  what  we 
shall  be."  For  them  the  misty  goal  is  not 
even  in  sight;  the  vale  is  bounded  by  huge 
pine-clad  precipices,  wreathed  with  snow  and 
crowned  with  cloud;  but  to  Meyrick  it  does 
appear  quite  definitely  what  we  are,  and  as 
for  the  end,  well,  the  avenue  of  the  world  seems 
to  lead  up  to  a  neat  classical  building  with 
pillars  and  a  pediment,  that  is  called  the 
temple  of  reason  and  common-sense. 

I  do  not  know  what  Meyrick 's  religious  views 
are;  he  attends  his  College  chapel  with  a  cool 
decorum.  But  I  suspect  him  of  being  a  quiet 
agnostic.  I  do  not  think  he  cares  a  straw 
whether  his  individuality  endures,  and  he  looks 
forward  to  a  progress  which  can  be  tabulated 
and  statistics  about  the  decrease  of  crime  and 
disease  that  can  be  verified;  that,  I  am  sure,  is 
his  idea  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven. 


XL 


I  have  been  staying  with  a  friend  in  Yorkshire, 
in  an  out-of-the-way  place,  and  I  have  seen  a 
good  deal  of  the  parish  clergyman  there,  who 
is  rather  a  pathetic  person,  I  think.  It  seems 
to  me  that  he  belongs  to  a  type  which  is  perhaps 
becoming  more  common,  and  the  fact  makes  me 
somewhat  anxious  about  the  future  of  the  Church 
of  England,  because  it  is  a  type  that  does  not 
seem  to  me  to  correspond  to  the  needs  of  the 
day  at  all.  He  was,  I  believe,  the  son  of  a 
solicitor  in  a  small  country  town;  he  was  edu- 
cated at  a  local  grammar-school,  and  went  up 
to  a  small  Cambridge  College;  here  he  took 
a  pass-degree,  and  then  went  into  a  Theological 
College,  of  a  rather  advanced  High-Church 
type.  Having  received  a  so-called  classical 
education,  he  had  no  particular  intellectual 
interests.  He  was  not  an  athlete;  he  worked 
just  enough  to  secure  a  pass-degree,  and  spent 
his  time  at  Cambridge  in  mild  sociability.  He 
takes  no  interest  in  politics,  books,  art,  games,  or 
even  agriculture.  Just  when  his  mind  began 
to  expand  a  little  he  went  off  to  the  Theological 

286 


A  Parish  Priest  287 

College,  where  he  was  indoctrinated  with  high 
ecclesiastical  ideas,  and  formed  a  great  idea  of 
the  supreme  importance  of  his  vocation.  He 
had  no  impulse  to  examine  the  foundations  of 
his  faith,  but  he  meekly  assimilated  a  large 
number  of  doctrinal  and  traditional  proposi- 
tions, such  as  the  Apostolic  succession,  the 
visible  corporate  Church,  the  sacrificial  theory 
of  the  Eucharist,  priestly  absolution,  and  so 
forth.  He  is  a  believer  in  systematic  confes- 
sion, but  is  careful  to  say  that  this  was  not  in- 
culcated upon  him,  but  only  indicated,  and  that 
his  belief  in  it  is  based  on  practical  experience. 
He  also  imbibed  a  great  love  of  liturgical  and 
ceremonial  usage.  He  was  for  a  short  time  a 
country  curate,  and  married  a  clergyman's 
daughter.  His  College  gave  him  the  living 
which  he  now  holds,  which  is  fairly  endowed; 
and  having  some  small  means  of  his  own,  he  lives 
comfortably.  I  will  add  that  he  is  a  thoroughly 
kindly  man,  and  very  conscientious  in  the  dis- 
charge of  what  he  conceives  to  be  his  duty. 
He  has  a  great  many  services  on  Sunday,  some- 
what sparsely  attended.  He  reads  matins 
and  vespers  every  day  in  his  church,  and  gives 
an  address  on  saints'  days.  But  he  seems  to 
have  no  idea  what  his  parishioners  are  doing 
or  thinking  about,  and  no  particular  desire  to 
know.  He  is  assiduous  in  visiting,  in  holding 
classes,  in  teaching;  he  has  no  sense  of  humour 


288  The  Silent  Isle 

whatever;  and  the  system  of  religion  which 
he  administers  is  so  perfectly  obvious  and  un- 
questioned a  thing  to  him,  that  it  never  occurs 
to  him  to  wonder  if  other  people  are  not  built 
on  different  lines.  I  have  often  attended  his 
church  and  heard  him  preach;  but  the  sermons 
which  I  have  heard  are  either  expositions  of  high 
doctrine,  or  else  discourses  of  what  I  can  only 
call  a  very  feminine  and  even  finicking  kind  of 
morality;  he  preaches  on  the  duty  of  church- 
going,  on  the  profane  use  of  scriptural  language, 
on  the  sanctification  of  joy,  on  the  advisability 
of  family  prayer,  on  religious  meditation,  on 
the  examples  of  saints,  on  the  privilege  of  de- 
votional exercises,  on  the  consecration  of  life, 
on  the  communion  of  saints,  on  the  ministry  of 
angels.  But  it  seems  all  remote  from  daily 
life,  and  to  be  a  species  of  religion  that  can  only 
be  successfully  cultivated  by  people  of  abundant 
leisure.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  many  of 
these  things  do  not  possess  a  certain  refined 
beauty  of  their  own;  but  I  do  feel  that  farmers 
and  labourers  are  not,  as  a  rule,  in  the  stage  in 
which  such  ideas  are  possible  or  even  desirable. 
I  have  seen  him  conduct  a  children's  service, 
and  then  he  is  in  high  content,  surrounded  by 
clean  and  well-brushed  infants,  and  smiling 
girls.  He  sits  in  a  chair  on  the  chancel  steps, 
in  a  paternal  attitude,  and  leads  them  in  a  little 
meditation  on  the  childhood  of  the  Mother  of 


A  Parish  Priest  289 

Christ.  Whenever  he  describes  a  scene  out 
of  the  Bible,  and  he  is  fond  of  doing  this,  it 
always  sounds  as  if  he  were  describing  a  stained- 
glass  window;  his  favourite  qualities  are  meek- 
ness, submissiveness,  devotion,  holiness;  and 
he  is  apt  to  illustrate  his  teaching  by  the  ex- 
ample of  the  Apostles,  whom  we  are  to  believe 
were  men  of  singular  modesty  because  we  hear 
so  very  little  about  them.  The  modern  world 
has  no  existence  for  him  whatever;  and  yet 
one  cannot  say  that  he  lives  in  the  Middle 
Ages,  because  he  knows  so  little  about  them; 
he  moves  in  a  paradise  of  cloistered  virgins  and 
mild  saints;  and  the  virtue  that  he  chiefly 
extols  is  the  virtue  of  faith ;  the  more  that  rea- 
son revolts  at  a  statement,  the  greater  is  the 
triumph  of  godly  faith  involved  in  accepting 
it  unquestioned. 

The  result  is  that  the  little  girls  love  him, 
the  boys  laugh  at  him,  the  women  admire  him, 
the  men  regard  him  as  not  quite  a  man.  The 
only  objects  for  which  he  raises  money  dili- 
gently are  additions  to  the  furniture  of  the 
church;  he  takes  a  languid  interest  in  foreign 
missions,  he  mistrusts  science,  and  social  ques- 
tions he  frankly  dislikes.  I  have  heard  him  say, 
with  an  air  of  deep  conviction,  when  the  ques- 
tion of  the  unemployed  is  raised,  "After  all,  we 
must  remember  that  the  only  possible  solution 
of  these  sad  difficulties  is  a  spiritual  one." 
19 


290  The  Silent  Isle 

The  pity  of  it  all  is  that  he  is  so  entirely 
complacent,  so  absolutely  unaware  that  there  is 
anything  amiss.  He  does  not  see  that  people 
have  to  be  tenderly  and  simply  wooed  to  reli- 
gion, and  that  they  have  to  be  led  to  take  an 
interest  in  their  own  characters  and  lives.  His 
idea  is  that  the  Church  is  there,  a  holy  and  vener- 
able institution,  with  undeniable  claims  on  the 
allegiance  and  loyalty  of  all.  Worship  is  to 
him  a  man's  first  duty  and  privilege;  and  if  he 
finds  that  one  of  his  parishioners  thinks  the 
services  tedious,  tiresome,  or  unintelligible,  he 
looks  upon  him  as  a  child  of  wrath,  perverse 
and  ungodly.  The  one  chance  a  clergyman  has 
to  gain  the  confidence  of  the  men  of  his  con- 
gregation is  when  he  prepares  the  boys  for  con- 
firmation; but  the  vicar  sees  them,  each  alone, 
week  after  week,  and  initiates  them  into  the 
theory  of  the  Visible  Church  and  the  advisability 
of  regular  confession.  I  confess  sadly  that  it 
does  not  seem  to  me  to  resemble  Christianity  at 
all;  in  the  place  of  the  shrewd,  simple,  tender, 
and  wise  teaching  of  Christ  about  daily  life  and 
effort,  the  duties  of  kindness,  purity,  unselfish- 
ness, he  gives  an  elaborate  picture  of  rites  and 
ceremonies,  of  mystical  and  spiritual  agencies, 
which  play  little  part  in  the  life  of  a  day 
labourer's  son.  If  he  would  learn  something 
about  the  points  of  a  horse  instead  of  about  the 
points  of  an  angel,  if  he  would  study  the  rotation 


A  Parish  Priest  291 

of  the  crops  instead  of  the  rotation  of  Easter- 
tide, he  would  find  himself  far  more  in  line  with 
his  flock :  if  he  would  busy  himself  with  getting 
the  boys  and  girls  good  places,  he  would  soon 
have  a  niche  in  the  hearts  of  his  parishioners; 
all  that  he  does  is  to  give  a  plough-boy,  who 
is  going  off  to  a  neighbouring  farm,  a  little 
manual  of  devotion,  with  ugly  and  sentimental 
chromo-lithographs,  and  beg  him  to  use  it  night 
and  morning. 

His  wife  is  of  the  same  type,  a  prim  and  colour- 
less woman,  who  believes  intensely  in  her  hus- 
band, and  devotes  herself  to  furthering  his  work. 
They  have  three  rather  priggish  children,  whose 
greatest  punishment  is  not  to  be  allowed  to  teach 
in  the  Sunday-school. 

One  does  not  like  to  laugh  at  a  man  whose 
whole  life  is  spent  in  doing  what  he  believes  to 
be  right ;  but  he  seems  to  have  no  hold  on  reali- 
ties, and  to  be  quite  unable  to  throw  himself, 
by  imagination  or  sympathy,  into  what  his  peo- 
ple want  or  need.  He  has  no  belief  in  secular 
education,  and  thinks  it  makes  people  dis- 
contented and  faithless.  He  is  generous  with 
his  money,  spending  lavishly  on  the  Church, 
but  he  does  not  believe  in  what  he  calls  indis- 
criminate charity.  The  incident  which  has 
touched  him  more  than  any  other  in  the  course 
of  his  ministry,  he  will  tell  you,  is  when  a  poor 
old  woman  on  her  death-bed  confided  to  him  a 


292  The  Silent  Isle 

few  shillings  to  be  spent  in  providing  an  altar- 
frontal.  He  gives  a  Sunday-school  feast  every 
year,  which  begins  with  a  versicle  and  a  re- 
sponse. "Thou  openest  Thine  Hand,"  he 
says  in  a  rich  voice,  and  the  children  pipe  in 
chorus,  "And  fillest  all  things  living  with 
plenteousness. "  The  day  ends  with  a  little 
service,  which  he  thoroughly  enjoys. 

Even  the  services  themselves  are  a  dreary 
business,  because  he  insists  on  the  whole  thing 
being  choral;  and  little  boys  in  short  cassocks, 
with  stocking-legs  underneath,  howl  the  re- 
sponses and  monotone  the  prayers  to  the  ac- 
companiment of  a  loud  raw  organ.  He  reads 
the  lessons  in  what  he  calls  a  devotional  way, 
which  consists  in  reciting  all  episodes  alike,  the 
song  of  Deborah  or  the  victories  of  Gideon,  as 
if  they  were  melancholy  and  pathetic  reflec- 
tions. He  is  fond  of  Gregorians  and  plain- 
song.  The  choirmen  consist  of  a  scrofulous 
invalid,  his  own  gardener  and  coachman,  and 
a  bankrupt  carpenter,  given  to  drink  and  pro- 
fuse repentance.  But  he  is  careful  to  say  that 
he  did  not  suggest  the  introduction  of  a  choral 
service — "it  was  forced  upon  him  by  the  wish 
of  certain  earnest  and  devoted  helpers. " 

The  fact  is  that  the  man  is,  as  the  children  say, 
a  real  goose.  There  is  nothing  manly,  vigorous, 
or  sensible  about  him;  he  sometimes  deplores 
the  indifference  of  his  parishioners  to  what  he 


A  Parish  Priest  293 

calls  true  Churchmanship,  but  he  never  thinks 
of  comparing  his  ideal  with  the  Gospel  or  with 
the  actual  conditions  of  the  world.  He  seems 
to  be  hopelessly  befogged;  he  is  as  certain  as 
only  a  virtuous  or  stupid  man  can  be  that  the 
religious  system  which  he  inculcates  is  the  exact 
and  deliberate  development  of  the  Spirit  of 
Christ;  and  to  hear  him  talk,  you  would  sup- 
pose that  the  only  joy  in  heaven  resulted  from  a 
rumour  that  another  church  was  added  to  the 
list  of  sanctuaries  which  had  daily  matins. 
The  hopeless  difficulty  is  that  he  considers  his 
system  so  pure  and  lovely  that  to  modify  it 
in  any  way  would  seem  to  be  a  grievous  com- 
promise with  worldliness,  a  violation  of  his  high 
calling;  he  looks  forward  confidently  to  the 
time  when  the  people  of  England  will  be  a  devo- 
tional and  submissive  flock,  crowding  daily  to 
their  village  sanctuaries,  and  going  back  home 
with  the  glow  and  glory  of  the  heavenly  mys- 
teries radiating  from  them  in  grave  smiles  and 
pious  ejaculations. 

It  all  seems  to  me  a  profoundly  melancholy 
business.  One  does  not  wish  to  prevent  peo- 
ple from  worshipping  God  in  the  vicar's  way, 
if  they  feel  that  thus  they  draw  near  to  the 
divine  presence;  but  it  can  only  be  a  very  small 
minority  who  will  ever  find  satisfaction  in  this 
particular  type  of  religion;  and  I  must  add  that, 
for   myself,   I    would   not   unwillingly  see  that 


294  The  Silent  Isle 

minority  reduced.  It  is  a  narrow,  stuffy,  and 
secluded  region  at  best,  remote  from  the  open 
air,  little  alive  to  simplicity,  manliness,  humour, 
courage,  and  cheerfulness.  What  I  resent  about 
it  is  the  solemn  certainty  with  which  this  system 
is  announced  to  be  the  eternal  purpose  and  de- 
sign of  God  for  man.  I  am  not  in  a  position  to 
say  that  it  is  not  God's  purpose,  but  nothing 
that  I  see  in  the  world  convinces  me  of  it;  and 
in  any  case  I  can  only  feel  that  if  this  type  of 
religion  continues  to  spread,  which  I  believe  it 
will  do,  if  the  better,  more  unaffected,  more 
intellectual,  more  manly  men  begin  to  be 
alienated  from  the  clerical  profession,  it  will 
end  in  a  complete  indifference  on  the  part  of 
the  nation  to  religion  at  all.  The  fault  lies 
largely,  I  believe,  with  the  seminaries.  They 
have  set  up  so  exotic  a  standard,  screwed 
up  the  ecclesiastical  tone  so  high,  that  few  but 
timid,  unintellectual,  cautious,  and  sentimental 
people  will  embrace  a  vocation  where  so  many 
pledges  have  to  be  given.  The  type  of  old- 
fashioned  village  clergyman,  who  was  at  all 
events  a  man  among  men,  kindly,  generous, 
hospitable,  tolerant,  and  sensible,  seems  doomed 
to  extinction,  and  I  cannot  help  thinking  that  it 
is  a  grievous  pity.  The  new  type  of  clergy- 
man would  think,  on  the  other  hand,  that 
their  disappearance  is  an  unmixed  blessing. 
They  would  say  that  they  were  sloppy,  self- 


A  Parish  Priest  295 

indulgent,  secular  persons,  and  that  the  im- 
provement in  tone  and  standard  among  the  clergy- 
was  a  pure  gain;  it  all  depends  upon  whether 
you  put  the  social  or  the  priestly  functions  of 
the  clergyman  highest.  I  am  inclined  to  rate 
their  social  value  very  high,  but  then  I  prefer 
the  parson  to  the  priest.  I  dislike  the  idea  of 
a  priestly  caste,  an  ecclesiastical  tradition,  a 
body  of  people  who  have  the  administering  of 
mysterious  spiritual  secrets.  I  want  to  bring 
religion  home  to  ordinary  people,  not  to  segre- 
gate it.  I  would  rather  have  in  every  parish  a 
wise  and  kindly  man  with  the  same  interests 
as  his  neighbours,  but  with  a  good  simple  stand- 
ard of  virtuous  and  brotherly  living,  than  a  man 
endowed  with  spiritual  powers  and  influences, 
upholding  a  standard  of  life  that  is  subtle, 
delicate,  and  refined  indeed,  but  which  is  neither 
simple  nor  practical,  and  to  which  the  ordinary 
human  being  cannot  conform,  because  it  lies 
quite  outside  of  his  range  of  thought.  To  my 
mind,  the  essence  of  the  Gospel  is  liberty  and 
simplicity;  but  the  Gospel  of  ecclesiasticism  is 
neither  simple  nor  free. 


XLI 

It  was  a  pleasant,  fresh  autumn  day,  and  the 
philosopher  was  in  a  good  temper.  He  was  my 
walking  companion  for  that  afternoon.  He  is 
always  ir>  a  good  temper,  for  the  matter  of  that, 
but  his  temper  has  different  kinds  of  goodness. 
He  is  always  courteous  and  amiable ;  but  some- 
times he  has  a  gentle  irony  about  him  and 
evades  all  attempts  to  be  serious — to-day, 
however,  he  was  both  benevolent  and  expansive; 
and  I  plunged  into  his  vast  mind  like  a  diver 
leaping  headlong  from  a  splash-board. 

Let  me  describe  my  philosopher  first.  He  is 
not  what  is  called  a  social  philosopher,  a  pre- 
tentious hedonist,  who  talks  continuously  and 
floridly  about  himself.  I  know  one  such,  of 
whom  an  enthusiastic  maiden  said,  in  a  con- 
fidential moment,  that  he  seemed  to  her  exactly 
like  Goethe  without  any  of  his  horrid  immorality. 
Neither  is  he  a  technical  philosopher,  a  dreary, 
hurrying  man,  travel-stained  by  faring  through 
the  ultimate,  spectacled,  cadaverous,  uncertain 
of  movement,  inarticulate  of  speech.  No,  my 
philosopher  is  a  trim,  well-brushed  man  of  the 

296 


A  Philosopher  297 

world,  rather  scrupulous  about  social  conven- 
tions, as  vigorous  as  Mr.  Greatheart,  and  with  a 
tenderness  for  the  feebler  sort  of  pilgrims.  To- 
day he  was  blithe  and  yet  serious ;  he  allowed  me 
to  ask  him  questions,  and  he  explained  to  me 
technical  terms.  I  felt  like  a  child  dandled  in 
the  arms  of  a  sage,  allowed  to  blow  upon  his 
watch  till  it  opened,  and  to  pull  his  beard. 
"No,"  he  said,  "I  don't  advise  you,  at  your 
age,  to  try  and  study  philosophy.  It  requires 
rather  a  peculiar  kind  of  mind.  You  will  have  to 
divest  words  of  poetical  associations  and  half- 
meanings,  and  arrive  at  a  kind  of  mathematical 
appreciation  of  their  value.  You  had  much 
better  talk  to  me,  if  you  care  to,  and  I  will  tell 
you  all  I  can.  Besides,"  he  added,  "much 
modern  philosophy  is  a  criticism  of  methods; 
it  has  become  so  special  a  business  that  we  have 
most  of  us  drifted  quite  beyond  the  horizon, 
like  the  higher  mathematicians,  into  questions 
that  have  no  direct  meaning  for  the  ordinary 
mind.  We  want  a  philosopher  with  a  power  of 
literary  expression,  who  can  make  some  attempt 
to  translate  our  results  into  ordinary  language. " 
"Why  could  you  not  do  it?"  I  said.  "Ah," 
said  he,  "that  is  not  my  line !  It  needs  a  certain 
missionary  spirit.  The  thing  amuses  and  in- 
terests me;  but  I  don't  feel  sure  that  it  can  be 
made  intelligible — and  moreover,  I  do  not 
think  it  would  be  wholly  profitable  either.     We 


298  The  Silent  Isle 

have  not  determined  enough;  besides,  ordinary- 
people  had  better  act  by  intuition  rather  than 
by  reason.  There  are,  too,  many  data  missing, 
and  perhaps  the  men  of  science  will  some  day 
be  in  a  position  to  give  us  some,  but  they  have 
not  got  far  enough  yet. " 

And  then  we  plunged  into  the  subject;  but  I 
will  not  attempt  to  reproduce  what  was  said, 
because  I  cannot  remember  it,  and  I  should  no 
doubt  grossly  misrepresent  my  master.  But  he 
led  me  a  fine  dance. 

It  was  like  a  walk  I  took  the  other  day  when  I 
was  staying  in  a  mountain  country.  A  com- 
panion of  mine,  tired  like  myself  of  inaction, 
went  off  with  me,  and  we  climbed  a  high  moun- 
tain. For  some  hours  we  walked  in  the  clouds, 
in  a  close-shifting  circle  of  mist,  seeing  no- 
thing but  the  little  cairns  that  marked  the  way, 
and  the  bleak  grasses  at  our  feet.  Now  and 
then  we  crossed  a  cold  stream  that  came  bub- 
bling into  our  dim  circle,  and  raved  hoarsely 
away  in  fretted  cataracts.  Once  we  passed  a 
black  and  silent  tarn,  with  leaden  waves  lapping 
among  the  stones.  Once  or  twice,  as  we  de- 
scended, the  skirts  of  the  cloud  drew  up  sud- 
denly, and  revealed  black  crags  and  rocky 
bastions,  and  down  below  a  great  valley,  with 
sheep  grazing,  pastures  within  stone  enclosures, 
little  farms,  and  mountain  bases  red  with  fern. 

That  was  like  my  mental  excursion  to-day. 


A  Philosopher  299 

It  was  very  cold  and  misty  on  the  heights  of 
my  friend's  mind.  I  recognised  sometimes 
familiar  things,  but  all  strangely  enlarged  and 
transfigured.  Once  or  twice,  too,  the  whole 
veil  flew  up,  and  disclosed  a  familiar  scene, 
which  I  felt  had  some  dim  connection  with  the 
chill  and  vaporous  height,  but  I  could  not  dis- 
cern what  it  was ;  and  when  we  came  down  again, 
the  heights  were  still  impenetrably  shrouded. 

Once  indeed  my  friend  emitted  a  flash  of 
scorn,  which  was  when  I  mentioned  the  religious 
commonplace  that  the  desire  of  men's  hearts  to 
be  assured  of  the  continuity  of  identity  was  a 
proof  that  such  a  craving  must  find  its  fulfil- 
ment. "A  pleasant  dream!"  he  said.  "One 
might  as  well  affirm  that  the  universal  desire 
for  wealth  and  health  was  a  proof  that  all  would 
be  ultimately  healthy  and  wealthy." 

But  though  I  understood  little,  and  remem- 
bered less,  I  felt  somehow  that  it  did  me  good  to 
be  brought  face  to  face  with  these  austere  pro- 
blems. It  had  a  bracing  effect  to  have  my  com- 
fortable, intuitions  plucked  from  me,  and  to  be 
bidden  to  walk  alone.  It  was  vaguely  inspiring 
to  look  into  the  misty  world  that  lies  behind 
history  and  religion  and  science,  the  world 
where  one  can  perhaps  be  sure  of  nothing  except 
of  one's  own  consciousness,  and  not  too  sure  of 
that.  Bracing  I  say,  because  of  its  bareness  and 
precariousness,  its  sense  of  ultimate  insecurity. 


300  The  Silent  Isle 

I  came  back  to  earth  not  discouraged  or  dis- 
mayed, but  more  conscious  than  ever  of  the 
urgency  of  practical  problems  and  the  actuality 
of  life.  And  so,  as  I  say,  out  of  my  breathless 
ramble  among  ultimate  causes  and  conceptions, 
I  came  back  to  the  world  with  a  great  sense  of 
zest  and  relief,  as  the  diver  of  whom  I  spoke 
sees  the  water  grow  paler  and  greener  before 
his  swimming  eyes,  and  next  moment  feels  the 
sunlight  ?bout  him  and  sees  the  willows  and  the 
river-bank.  I  came  back  filled  with  a  sense  of 
far-off  possibilities,  and  yet  more  sure  than  ever 
that  we  must  neither  idle  nor  despair,  but 
walk  swiftly  and  patiently  and  help  each  other 
along.  Not  only  did  I  feel  my  duty  to  my 
fellows  to  be  more  clear  and  sure;  but  my  own 
need  of  help,  my  own  insignificance,  to  be  more 
pleasantly  insistent.  Out  of  the  world  where  I 
was  only  sure  of  my  own  consciousness  I  came 
down  into  the  world  where  I  am  no  less  practi- 
cally sure  of  the  presence  of  millions  of  similar 
souls,  very  blind  and  weak,  perhaps,  but  very 
real  and  dear.  On  those  cloudy  hills  I  had 
gone  astray  as  a  sheep  that  is  lost;  and  then 
suddenly  there  was  the  sense  of  the  shepherd 
walking  near  me — the  shepherd  himself! — for 
the  philosopher  was  only  a  lesser  kind  of  angel 
bearing  a  vial  in  his  hands;  the  blessed  sense  of 
being  searched  for  and  guided  and  tenderly 
chidden  and  included  in  the  welcome  fold.     I 


A  Philosopher  3°* 

hope  that  my  philosopher  may  yet  walk  on  the 
hills  with  me,  if  only  for  the  sake  of  the  love 
I  bear  the  green  valleys;  and  when  I  see  the 
great  stream  passing  silently  from  translucent 
pool  to  pool,  overhung  by  rowans  and  sun- 
warmed  rocks,  I  shall  be  glad  to  think  that  I 
have  walked  on  the  heights  where  it  was  gath- 
ered and  drawn,  and  that  I  have  heard  it  talk 
hoarsely  to  itself,  cold  and  uncomforted,  among 
the  bleak  and  dripping  stones. 


XLII 

I  have  just  returned  from  a  few  days  in  town, 
feeling  that  it  is  good  to  have  been  there,  if 
only  for  the  sake  of  the  return  to  the  cool  silence 
of  these  solitary  fields.  I  am  not  ungrateful  for 
all  the  kindness  which  I  have  received,  but  I 
cannot  help  thinking  of  the  atmosphere  which 
I  have  left  with  a  kind  of  horror. 

The  friend  with  whom  I  have  been  staying  is 
a  man  of  considerable  wealth.  He  has  no  oc- 
cupation but  the  pursuit  of  culture.  He  is 
married  to  a  charming  wife,  also  wealthy;  but 
they  are  childless,  and  the  result  is  that  they 
have  nothing  to  expend  their  energies  upon 
except  books  and  art  and  society.  At  long 
intervals  my  friend  produces  a  tiny  volume, 
beautifully  printed  and  bound,  which  he  presents 
to  his  friends.  Last  year  it  was  an  account  of 
some  curious  religious  ceremonies  which  he 
came  across  in  a  tour  in  Brittany.  I  dare  say  I 
am  wrong,  but  it  seems  to  me  that  the  only 
charm  of  these  grotesque  and  absurd  rites  is 
that  country  people  should  practise  them  quietly 
and  secretly,  as  a  matter  of  old  and  customary 

302 


A  Man  of  Taste  3°3 

tradition.  The  moment  that  the  cultivated 
stranger  comes  among  them  with  his  philologi- 
cal and  sociological  explanations,  their  pretty 
significance  seems  to  me  to  be  gone.  I  do  not 
care  a  brass  farthing  what  they  are  all  about; 
they  are  old,  they  are  legendary;  as  performed 
by  people  who  have  grown  up  among  them, 
and  seen  them  practised  from  childhood  as  a 
matter  of  course,  they  have  a  certain  grace  of 
congruity  about  them,  as  the  schoolmen  say. 
But  printed  gravely  in  a  book  they  seem  to  me 
to  be  nothing  but  barbarous  and  foolish  games 
of  childish  import. 

Another  year  he  found  some  Finnish  legends 
when  he  was  on  a  yachting  cruise,  which  he 
translated  into  an  ungainly  English.  The 
tales  are  utterly  worthless,  not  a  spark  of  ro- 
mance from  beginning  to  end,  only  typical  of 
an  age  which  I  humbly  thank  God  we  have 
left  behind. 

This  year  he  is  full  of  Balearic  music ;  he  played 
me  a  number  of  dreary  and  monotonous  tunes, 
which  he  said  were  so  characteristic.  But  if 
they  were  characteristic,  and  I  have  no  reason 
to  doubt  his  word,  they  only  seem  to  me  to 
prove  that  those  islanders  are  destitute  of 
musical  taste  and  instinct  to  a  quite  singular 
degree. 

While  I  was  up  in  town,  my  friends  certainly 
did  their  best  to  amuse  me;  they  had  agreeable 


304  The  Silent  Isle 

people  of  a  literary  type  to  luncheon,  tea,  and 
dinner.  We  heard  some  music,  we  went  to  a 
play  or  two,  we  went  to  look  at  some  pictures. 
But  I  confess  to  having  laboured  under  an  in- 
creasing depression,  because  the  whole  thing  was 
conducted  by  rule  and  line,  and  in  a  terribly 
businesslike  way;  we  knew  beforehand  exactly 
what  we  were  to  look  out  for.  We  did  not  go 
in  a  liberal  and  expectant  spirit,  hoping  that  we 
might  £nd  or  see  or  hear  some  unexpectedly 
beautiful  thing,  but  we  went  in  a  severely 
critical  spirit,  to  see  if  we  could  detect  how 
the  painters  and  musicians,  whose  art  we  were 
to  inspect,  deviated  from  received  methods. 
We  went,  indeed,  not  to  gain  an  impression  of 
originality  and  personality,  but  to  look  out 
for  certain  tabulated  qualities;  it  depressed  me 
too,  perhaps  unduly,  to  hear  the  jargon  with 
which  these  criticisms  were  heralded.  The 
triumph  appeared  to  be  to  use  a  set  of  terms 
appropriate  to  one  art,  for  the  effects  produced 
by  the  others;  thus  in  music  we  went  in  search 
of  colour  and  light,  of  atmospheric  effect  and 
curve;  in  painting  it  seemed  we  were  in  search 
of  harmony,  rhythm,  and  tone.  I  should  not 
have  minded  if  I  had  felt  that  these  words  really 
meant  anything  in  the  minds  of  those  who  used 
them;  but  it  seemed  to  me  that  the  critics  were 
more  in  love  with  their  terminology  than  with 
the    effects    themselves;    and    still    more,    that 


Literary  Discussion  305 

they  went  not  to  form  novel  impressions,  but 
to  search  for  things  which  they  had  been  told 
to  expect. 

It  was  the  same  with  the  treatment  of  litera- 
ture ;  it  all  seemed  reduced  to  a  game  played  with 
counters.  There  was  no  simplicity  of  appre- 
hension; the  point  seemed  to  be  to  apply  a  cer- 
tain set  of  phrases  as  decisively  as  possible.  I 
never  heard  a  generous  appreciation  of  a  book; 
rather  what  I  heard  was  trivial  gossip  about 
the  author,  followed  by  shallow,  and  I  thought 
pedantic,  judgments  upon  an  author's  lack  of 
movement  or  aerial  quality.  If  one  of  the 
approved  authors  under  discussion  seemed  to 
me  painfully  sordid  and  debased,  one  was  told 
to  look  out  for  his  tonic  realism  and  his  virile 
force.  How  many  times  in  those  sad  hours 
was  I  informed  that  the  artist  had  no  concern 
with  ethical  problems!  If  I  maintained  that 
an  artist's  concern  is  with  any  motives  that 
sway  humanity,  I  was  told  smilingly  that  I 
wanted  to  treat  art  in  the  spirit  of  a  nursery 
governess.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  a  book  ap- 
peared to  me  utterly  unreal  and  false,  I  was  told 
that  it  was  typical  and  spiritual,  and  that  the 
conception  of  the  artist  must  not  be  limited 
by  his  experience,  but  that  he  arrived  at  correct 
intuitions  by  the  force  of  penetrating  insight 
and  by  the  swift  inference  of  genius. 

What  seemed  to  me  to  be  absent  from  it  all 
20 


306  The  Silent  Isle 

was  the  spirit  of  liberty,  of  frank  enjoyment, 
of  eager  apprehension.  I  do  not  say  that  my 
friends  seemed  to  me  to  admire  all  the  wrong 
things;  they  had  abundant  appreciation  for 
certain  masters,  both  in  art  and  music;  but  I 
felt  that  they  swallowed  masters  whole,  without 
any  discrimination,  and  that  the  entire  thing 
was  a  matter  of  tradition  and  rule  and  precept 
and  authority,  not  of  irresponsible  and  ardent 
enjoyment.  It  was  all  systematised  and  regu- 
lated; there  was  no  question  of  personal  pre- 
ferences. The  aim  of  the  perceptive  man  was 
to  find  out  what  was  the  correct  standard  of 
good  taste,  and  then  to  express  his  agreement 
with  it  in  elaborate  phrases.  Most  of  the  party 
were  of  the  same  type.  Not  that  they  were 
oddly-dressed,  haggard,  affected  women  or 
long-haired,  pretentious,  grotesque  men.  I  have 
been  at  such  coteries,  too,  where  they  praised 
each  other's  work  with  odd,  passionate  cries 
and  wriggling,  fantastic  gestures.  That  is 
terrible  too,  because  that  is  culture  which  has 
turned  rancid.  But  at  my  friend's  house  it 
was  not  rancid  at  all,  it  was  simply  unassimi- 
lated.  My  friend  himself  handed  out  culture 
in  neat  pieces,  carefully  done  up,  as  a  vendor  of 
toffee  might  hand  it  out  to  purchasers;  and  the 
people  who  came  there,  well-dressed,  amiable, 
quiet,  courteous  people,  would  have  been  de- 
lightful  if   they   had   not   been   so   cultivated. 


Culture  307 

Culture  lay  about  in  lumps ;  it  had  never  soaked 
in.  The  result  was  that  I  felt  I  could  never 
get  to  know  any  of  these  agreeable  people  at 
all.  One  tried  to  talk,  and  one  was  met  with  a 
proffer  of  a  lump  of  culture.  Then,  as  I  say, 
it  was  all  in  pieces;  it  was  not  part  of  a  plan 
or  an  attitude  of  mind ;  it  had  all  been  laboriously 
collected,  and  it  was  just  as  it  had  been  dis- 
covered; it  did  not  seem  to  have  undergone 
any  mental  process. 

And  then,  further,  I  felt  that  it  was  all  too 
comfortable — it  was  all  built  on  a  foundation  of 
comfort;  that  lay  really  at  the  bottom  of  it  all. 
The  house  was  too  full  of  beautiful  things; 
the  dinner  was  too  long  and  too  good;  the  wine 
was  too  choice.  I  am  not  going  to  pretend 
that  I  do  not  like  comfort;  but  I  do  not  like 
luxury,  and  this  was  luxurious.  I  do  not  want 
to  have  a  long  and  elaborate  dinner ;  it  should  be 
simplex  manditiis,  as  Horace  said.  And  beauti- 
ful pictures  and  furniture  are  more  beautiful 
if  there  is  not  too  much  of  them.  One  felt, 
in  this  warm,  fragrant  house,  with  every  room 
and  wall  crammed  with  charming  objects, 
with  every  desire  anticipated,  the  dinner-table 
bright  with  flowers  and  silver,  with  "  orient  liquor 
in  a  crystal  glass, "  as  if  one  stifled  under  a  load 
of  delights;  I  yearned  for  plainer  rooms  and 
simpler  fare,  and  for  freer  and  more  genuine 
talk.     One  felt  that  the  aim  of  the  circle  was 


308  The  Silent  Isle 

satisfaction  rather  than  beauty;  to  be  sheltered 
and  caressed  rather  than  to  be  invigorated  and 
tranquillised. 

I  was  standing  in  a  drawing-room  one  night 
before  dinner,  already  sated  with  the  food, 
the  talk,  the  music,  and  the  art  of  the  day,  as 
the  guests  began  to  arrive:  such  clean,  brilliant 
men,  faultlessly  appointed;  such  beautiful  and 
delicate  women,  with  a  vague  sense  of  fragrance 
and  jewels,  came  stealing  in.  Suddenly  among 
the  company  there  came  stalking  in  a  great 
literary  man,  an  old  friend  of  my  own;  hand- 
some, too,  and  well-appointed  enough,  but  with 
a  touch  of  roughness  and  vigour  that  made  him, 
I  thought,  like  a  chieftain  among  courtiers;  and 
wearing  the  haggard  air  of  the  man  who  toils 
at  his  art,  and  cannot  achieve  his  incommuni- 
cable hopes  or  capture  his  divine  dreams. 
He  came  up  to  me,  smiling,  in  a  secluded  corner. 
"Hullo,"  he  said,  "mon  vieux!  who  would  have 
thought  of  finding  you  here  in  the  island  of 
Circe?" 

"I  might  ask  the  same  question,"  I  said. 
"But  perhaps  I  have  the  sacred  herb,  moly, 
the  'small  unsightly  root'  in  my  bosom,  to 
guard  me  against  the  spells." 

"The  leaf  has  prickles  on  it,"  he  said,  with  a 
smile;  "there  is  nothing  prickly  about  our 
friends  here." 

This   was   mere   sword-play,    of   course,    not 


Olympus  and  Parnassus       309 

real  talk;  and  then  we  had  five  minutes'  talk 
which  I  will  not  put  down,  because  I  should 
betray  secrets,  and  secrets  too  in  their  rough, 
uncut  form,  the  gems  of  art,  which  must  be  cut 
before  they  are  presented.  But  I  got  more 
out  of  those  five  minutes  than  I  did  out  of  the 
rest  of  my  visit. 

Presently  we  went  in  to  dinner,  and  the  per- 
formance began.  How  skilfully  it  was  all 
guided  and  modulated  by  our  host,  who  was  in 
his  best  form.  What  delicate  flies  he  threw 
over  his  fish ;  how  softly  they  rose  to  them.  The 
talk  flashed  to  and  fro;  the  groups  formed, 
broke,  re-formed.  But  it  was  a  shallow  stream; 
there  was  no  zeal  or  vehemence;  it  was  all 
polished,  deft,  superficial,  conventional.  It 
was  like  playing  an  agile  and  elaborate  game; 
and  I  felt  that  those  who  took  part  in  it  were 
congratulating  themselves  on  the  brilliance  of 
the  affair.  Education,  religion,  art,  poetry, 
music — we  had  something  to  say  about  all;  and 
yet  I  felt  that  no  light  had  been  thrown  upon 
anything.  A  lady  of  high  rank  gave  me  her 
views  upon  the  writing  of  English  prose,  with 
the  air  of  one  speaking  condescendingly  from 
Olympus,  which,  as  we  know,  was  above  even 
Parnassus.  In  the  middle  I  caught  the  eye  of 
the  great  man,  who  was  opposite  me;  he  gave 
me  a  mournful  smile,  and  I  read  his  thoughts. 
When  the  ladies  had  withdrawn,  my  host,  with 


310  The  Silent  Isle 

a  determined  air  as  of  a  man  above  prejudice, 
started  the  conversation  on  rather  more  virile 
lines;  and  the  result  was  a  certain  amount  of 
delicately  risque  talk.  But  even  here  we  felt 
that  it  was  not  human  nature  that  was  revealed. 
It  was  Voltairean  rather  than  Rabelaisian;  and 
I  dislike  both.  Then  afterwards  we  sank 
into  luxurious  chairs  in  the  rich  perfumed 
drawing-room;  we  talked  low  and  impressively 
to  charming  ladies;  there  was  some  exquisite 
music,  so  pure  and  sweet  that  it  seemed  to  me 
to  put  to  shame  the  complex  and  elaborate 
pageant  of  life  in  which  we  took  part;  and  out- 
side, one  remembered,  there  were  the  rain- 
splashed  streets,  the  homeless  wind;  and  the 
toiling  multitudes  that  made  such  delights 
possible,  and  gave  of  their  dreary,  sordid  labour 
that  we  might  sit  thus  at  ease.  The  whole 
thing  seemed  artificial,  soulless,  hectic,  unreal. 
One  could  not  help  thinking  of  Dives  and  Laz- 
arus, that  strange  parable  that  has  so  stern  a 
moral.  "But  now  he  is  comforted  and  thou 
art  tormented."  It  is  not  suggested  there 
that  vice  is  punished  and  virtue  rewarded; 
merely  that  wealth  is  penalised  and  poverty 
compensated. 

Well,  it  is  a  great  mystery.  No  uneasy 
doubt  as  to  the  Tightness  of  things,  as  they  are, 
ever  troubled  the  mind  of  my  serene  host  or 
his    gracious   wife.     The   following   morning    I 


The  Spirit  of  Art  311 

went  away;  I  was  sped  on  my  way  with  courte- 
ous kindness;  but  all  the  attention  I  received 
lies  somewhat  heavy  on  my  heart.  I  do  not 
know  how  I  could  express  to  my  friends  what 
I  felt;  they  would  not  understand  it  if  I  tried 
to  explain  it.  They  think  of  me  as  a  queer 
rustic  being,  fond  of  a  lonely  life;  they  feel,  un- 
consciously enough,  that  they  are  conferring  a 
benefit  upon  me  by  enabling  me  to  set  foot  in  so 
cultured  a  circle;  and  there  is  no  sense  of  pa- 
tronage about  this — nothing  but  real  kindness. 
But  they  feel  that  they  are  in  possession  of  the 
higher  and  more  beautiful  life,  and  I  have  no 
sort  of  doubt  that  they  believe  I  regard  their 
paradise  with  envy;  that  I  would  live  the  same 
life  if  I  had  the  means.  I  fully  admit  that  I  am 
not  nearly  so  perfectly  equipped  with  culture 
as  my  friends.  I  have  not  got  a  quarter  of 
their  stock  or  of  their  experience ;  but  yet  I  am  as 
absolutely  sure  that  I,  with  all  my  deficiencies 
and  ignorances,  negligences,  incompletenesses, 
am  inside  the  sacred  circle  of  art,  as  I  am  cer- 
tain that  they  are  without  it.  To  me  beauty 
is  a  holy  and  bewildering  passion;  a  divine 
spirit,  that  sometimes  heaps  treasures  upon 
me  with  both  hands,  and  sometimes  denies  the 
least  hint  of  her  influence.  But  they,  I  feel, 
mistake  craftsmanship  and  accomplishment  and 
technique  for  the  inner  spirit  of  art;  they  have 
never  felt  the  awful  rapture,  the  overwhelming 


312  The  Silent  Isle 

impulse.  And  thus,  as  I  say,  I  return  to  my 
lonely  house  with  its  austere  rooms ;  to  my  old 
piano,  my  old  books;  to  my  wide  fields  and 
leafless  trees,  with  a  sense  of  weary  gratitude 
as  of  one  returning  home  to  worship  at  a  quiet 
shrine,  after  being  compelled  to  play  a  part  in  a 
pageant  which  is  not  concerned  with  the  things 
of  the  soul. 


XLIII 

It  must  have  been  just  about  a  year  ago  to-day 
that  I  received  one  morning  a  letter  from  an 
old  acquaintance  of  mine,  Henry  Gregory  by 
name,  telling  me  that  he  was  staying  in  my 
neighbourhood — might  he  come  over  to  see 
me?     I  asked  him  to  come  to  luncheon. 

I  do  not  remember  how  I  first  came  to  know 
Gregory,  but  I  was  instrumental  in  once  getting 
him  a  little  legal  work  to  do,  since  when  he  has 
shown  a  dangerous  disposition  to  require  similar 
services  of  me,  and  even  to  confide  in  me.  I 
am  quite  incapable — not  on  principle,  but  from 
a  sort  of  feeble  courtesy — of  rejecting  such 
overtures.  It  does  more  harm  than  good, 
because  I  am  unable  to  help  him  in  any  way; 
and  the  result  of  our  talks  is  only  to  send  him 
away  disappointed  and  annoyed,  and  to  leave 
me  both  bored  and  compassionate,  with  that 
wholly  ineffectual  compassion  which  is  a  mere 
morbid  sentiment.  Judge  between  him  and  me! 
I  will  tell  the  whole  story. 

Gregory  is  a  man  of  real  ability,  conscientious, 
clear-headed,  accurate.     He  was  one  of  a  large 

313 


314  The  Silent  Isle 

family;  his  father  a  country  solicitor,  I  think. 
He  was  at  a  public  school  and  at  the  University ; 
he  has  a  small  income  of  his  own,  perhaps 
£150  a  year;  and  he  drifted  to  the  bar.  I 
don't  think  he  ever  made  friends  with  any  one 
in  his  life — he  is  constitutionally  incapable  of 
friendship.  I  have  seen  him  in  the  company 
of  one  or  two  unaccountably  dreary  men,  him- 
self the  dreariest  of  the  party.  He  is  long- 
winded,  jxact  in  statement,  ponderous.  He  has 
no  sort  of  imagination,  and  no  touch  of  humour. 
He  can  be  depended  upon  to  give  you  a  mass  of 
detailed  information  on  almost  any  point,  and 
every  subject  that  he  touches  turns  to  lead 
before  your  eyes.  One  has  a  sense  of  mental 
indigestion  for  a  day  or  two  after  one  has  seen 
him,  until  one  has  forgotten  his  statements. 
If  I  desired  to  think  ill  of  a  writer,  I  should 
ask  Gregory  his  opinion  of  him;  he  would  ex- 
tinguish once  and  for  all  my  interest  in  the 
subject.  He  has  been  wholly  unsuccessful  at 
the  bar;  he  lives  in  London  lodgings,  and  I  can- 
not conceive  how  he  employs  his  time.  There 
is  a  club  I  sometimes  visit  (I  fear  I  should  visit 
it  oftener  if  Gregory  were  not  a  member), 
where  he  sits  like  a  moulting  condor  in  a  corner, 
or  wanders  about  seeking  a  receptacle  for  his 
information.  I  got  him,  as  I  have  said,  a 
piece  of  legal  work;  it  was  done,  I  believe, 
admirably;  but  the  solicitor  whom  I  referred  to 


Henry  Gregory  315 

Gregory  has  since  told  me  that  he  cannot 
employ  him  again.  "I  simply  have  not  the 
time,"  he  said;  "our  consultations  took  longer 
than  I  could  have  conceived  possible;  there 
was  not  a  single  contingency  in  heaven  and  earth 
that  Gregory  did  not  foresee  and  describe!" 

This  has  gone  on  until  Gregory  has  reached  the 
mature  age  of  fifty-five.  He  has  no  work  and  no 
friend.  His  relations  cannot  tolerate  him.  He 
is  a  deeply  aggrieved  man,  bitterly  conscious  of 
his  failure,  and  the  worst  of  it  is  that  it  has 
never  yet  occurred  to  him  that  he  may  be  him- 
self to  blame.  He  is  so  virtuous,  so  laborious, 
so  just,  so  entirely  free  from  faults  of  every 
kind,  that  he  cannot  possibly  have  even  the 
grim  satisfaction  of  self-censure.  He  has  in- 
stinctively obeyed  every  copy-book  maxim 
that  was  ever  written;  he  is  one  of  the  very 
few  men  who  cannot  sincerely  join  in  the  Con- 
fession, because  it  is  impossible  for  him  to  say 
that  he  has  done  those  things  that  he  ought  not 
to  have  done;  and  yet,  with  all  his  powers  and 
virtues,  he  is  simply  a  tragic  failure.  No  one 
has  a  word  to  say  for  him;  he  can  get  no  work; 
he  is  an  absolutely  unnecessary  person.  Yet 
there  are  positions  which  he  could  have  held 
with  credit.  He  would  have  been  an  excellent 
clerk,  and  a  competent  official.  But  now  he  is 
simply  a  briefless  barrister,  without  a  friend  in 
the  world. 


316  The  Silent  Isle 

He  arrived  very  punctually  to  luncheon.  He 
is  a  small,  sturdy  man,  with  a  big  head,  of  a 
uniform,  dull  tint,  as  if  it  were  carved  out  of 
a  not  very  successfully  boiled  chicken.  He 
is  bald,  and  wears  spectacles.  He  was  rather 
primly  dressed,  and  everything  about  him  gave 
a  sense  of  careful  and  virtuous  economy,  from 
the  uncompromising  hardness  of  his  heavy 
grey  suit  to  the  emphatic  solidity  of  his  great 
boots.  T  had  two  rather  lively  young  men 
staying  with  me,  and  they  behaved  with 
remarkable  kindness.  But  Gregory  put  the 
garden-roller  over  us  all  in  a  very  few  minutes. 
One  of  my  young  friends  asked  a  silly  question 
about  current  politics.  Gregory  looked  at 
him  blankly,  and  said,  "I  am  afraid  that  that 
question  betrays  a  very  superficial  acquaintance 
with  the  elements  of  political  economy.  May  I 
ask  if  you  picked  that  up  at  Cambridge?" 
He  gave  a  short  mirthless  laugh,  and  I  under- 
stood that  he  was  trying  his  hand  at  a  little 
light  social  badinage.  However,  it  flattened 
out  my  young  friend,  while  Gregory  ruthlessly 
told  us  the  elements,  and  a  good  deal  more 
than  the  elements,  of  that  science.  He  was 
diverted  from  his  lecture  by  the  appearance 
of  some  ham.  Gregory  commented  upon  the 
inferiority  of  English  hams,  and  described  the 
process  of  curing  hams  in  Westphalia,  which, 
unfortunately   for   us,    he   had   personally   wit- 


Henry  Gregory  317 

nessed.  So  it  went  on.  It  was  impossible  to 
stop  him  or  to  divert  him.  When  he  ceased 
for  a  moment,  to  swallow  a  mouthful,  I  inter- 
jected a  remark  about  the  weather.  Gregory- 
replied,  "Yes;  and  then  they  have  a  method 
of  packing  the  hams  which  is  said  to  have  the 
effect  of  retaining  their  flavour  in  a  remarkable 
degree.  Imagine  a  strip  of  sacking  revolving 
upon  two  metal  objects  somewhat  resembling 
fishing-reels."  So  it  continued;  and  it  was  de- 
livered, moreover,  in  a  tone  of  voice  which  it 
was  somehow  impossible  to  elude;  it  compelled 
a  sort  of  agonised  attention.  After  luncheon, 
while  we  were  smoking,  one  of  my  young 
friends,  who  could  bear  passivity  no  longer, 
played  a  few  chords  of  Wagner  on  a  piano. 
Gregory  poured  into  the  gap  like  a  great  cas- 
cade, and  we  had  a  discourse  on  the  origins  of 
the  Wagnerian  librettos. 

After  it  was  over  and  we  were  trying  to  banish 
the  subject  from  our  minds,  I  sent  the  other 
two  out  for  a  walk — this  had  been  agreed  upon 
previously — and  prepared  to  face  the  music 
alone.  But  they  only  just  escaped,  for  Gregory 
followed  them  to  the  gate,  determined  that 
they  should  take  a  particular  walk,  to  notice 
the  geological  formation  of  the  country.  We 
then  went  out  for  a  stroll  together,  and 
Gregory  said  that  he  must  talk  business,  and 
drew  a  strip  of  paper  from  his  pocket.       This 


318  The  Silent  Isle 

contained   a   series   of  commissions  for  me  to 
execute. 

I  was  to  get  him  some  introductions  to  editors 
or  Members  of  Parliament;  I  was  to  propose 
him  at  a  club;  I  was  to  find  him  some  pupils 
in  law;  I  was  to  read  a  manuscript  for  him 
and  place  it.  I  raised  feeble  objections.  "You 
seem  to  make  a  great  number  of  unnecessary 
difficulties,"  said  Gregory.  "I  don't  think 
that  any  of  my  requests  can  be  called  un- 
reasonable. You  know  enough  of  me  to  be 
able  to  say  that  I  should  discharge  any  duty  I 
undertook  thoroughly  and  competently. "  "Yes, 
I  know,"  I  said;  "but  one  cannot  force  peo- 
ple's hands  in  these  matters."  "I  don't  ask 
you  to  force  their  hands,"  said  Gregory;  "I 
merely  ask  you  to  give  me  these  introductions, 
and  to  write  a  perfectly  truthful  account  of 
me."  Perhaps  I  ought  to  have  been  more 
firm;  but  I  could  not  find  any  adequate  reason 
for  objecting.  I  could  not  tell  him  that  the 
all-embracing  and  all-sufficing  reason  against 
his  possibility  of  success  was  that  he  was  him- 
self. When  it  came  to  placing  his  manuscript, 
I  said  that  such  things  did  not  go  by  favour — 
and  plucking  up  a  desperate  courage,  said  that 
we  all  had  to  make  our  own  position  in  litera- 
ture. I  suggested  that  he  must  send  his  articles 
to  editors  like  any  one  else,  and  that  they  were 
only  too  anxious  to  secure  the  sort  of  things 


Henry  Gregory  319 

they  wanted.  "No,"  said  Gregory;  "there  is 
an  element  of  uncertainty  about  that  which  will 
not  do  for  me.  I  have  tried  editor  after  editor, 
and  have  invariably  had  my  articles  returned. 
I  will  venture  to  say — and  I  do  not  think  you 
will  contradict  me — that  they  are  all  thorough, 
sound,  and  accurate  pieces  of  work,  far  more 
reliable  than  much  of  the  stuff  which  appears 
every  day;  all  I  want  is  just  the  personal  touch 
with  an  editor  or  two;  but,  of  course,  if  you 
will  not  help  me,  I  must  try  elsewhere — but 
I  must  confess  that  I  am  very  much  disap- 
pointed."  He  looked  drearily  at  me,  leaning 
on  his  stick.  I  do  not  think  he  had  any  idea 
where  we  were,  nor  had  he  seen  any  single 
object  which  we  had  passed ;  but  at  this  moment 
he  noticed  a  flower  in  the  hedge,  and  looked 
tenderly  at  it.  "  Ha !  there  is  ailanthus  vulgaris ," 
he  said — "very  unusual.  Excuse  my  interrupt- 
ing you,  but  botany  is  rather  a  passion  of 
mine.  It  may  interest  you  to  hear  .  .  ."  and 
I  had  a  few  minutes'  botany  thrown  in.  "But 
we  must  return  to  our  muttons,"  he  said,  after 
a  short  pause,  with  a  convulsion  of  the  jaw 
that  was  meant  for  a  smile;  and  we  did.  He 
went  over  the  whole  ground  again — and  then 
suddenly  came  a  human  cri  du  cceur  which  gave 
me  one  of  those  fruitless  pangs  which  are  the 
saddest  things  in  the  world.  He  was  dusting 
the  sleeve  of  his  coat,  and  I  could  not  help 


320  The  Silent  Isle 

feeling  with  what  unnecessary  conscientious- 
ness he  was  doing  it.  He  turned  to  me.  "Do 
help  me,  if  you  can.  I  really  have  done  my 
best,  but  I  can't  get  any  work  to  do.  I  have 
not  the  position  to  which  I  may  fairly  say  my 
abilities  and  diligence  entitle  me.  I  don't  un- 
derstand why  it  is — I  can't  see  where  I  am  to 
blame. "  Of  course  I  promised  to  do  what  I  could, 
and  Gregory  handed  me  a  slip  of  paper  corre- 
sponding to  his  own  which  he  had  prepared  for  me. 
We  drew  near  to  the  little  wayside  station 
where  he  was  to  catch  a  train.  It  was  a  summer 
day  of  extraordinary  loveliness.  The  great 
green  fen  slept  peacefully  in  the  sun,  and  the 
low  green  hills  beyond  lay  quivering  in  the 
haze.  Gregory,  lost  in  bitter  musings,  in  his 
careful  threadbare  clothes,  rather  unpleasantly 
hot,  hopelessly  bewildered  as  to  his  place  in 
the  universe,  conscious  of  virtue,  equipped 
with  information,  desiring  neither  pity  nor 
affection,  but  only  work  and  due  recognition, 
was  a  sad  blot  upon  nature.  The  whole  busi- 
ness of  his  creation  and  preservation  seemed  an 
ugly  and  a  heartless  one,  and  his  redemption  be- 
yond the  power  of  imagination.  The  train  came 
in,  and  he  got  wearily  in,  shook  hands,  and  im- 
mersed himself  in  a  book.  He  said  no  more, 
made  no  sign,  waved  no  hand  of  farewell.  He 
did  not  feel  any  sentimental  emotion;  he  had 
come  on  business,  and  he  went  away  on  business. 


Henry  Gregory  321 

Of  course  it  was  of  no  use.  I  wrote  a  few 
letters,  read  Gregory's  manuscript,  and  had  to 
take  a  course  of  Sherlock  Holmes  in  order  to 
obliterate  the  nauseous  memory  of  its  dul- 
ness.  Nothing  came  of  it  all,  except  a  very 
offensive  letter  from  Gregory  about  my  in- 
effectiveness and  general  duplicity. 

Why  do  I  venture,  it  may  be  asked,  to  print 
this  dreadful  sketch  of  a  man  who  may  see 
it  and  recognise  it?  He  will  not  see  it,  and 
for  the  best  of  sad  reasons.  But  on  reflection 
I  do  not  know  that  the  reason  is  a  sad  one. 
Gregory  died  rather  suddenly  in  his  lodgings 
a  few  months  later,  and  so  the  curtain  came 
down  upon  rather  a  dismal  comedy,  or  a  de- 
plorable tragedy,  according  to  one's  taste  in 
classification.  The  only  marvel  is  why  the 
sad  drama  was  ever  put  on  the  stage,  and  why 
it  was  allowed  to  have  so  long  a  run.  There 
is  hope  in  this  world  for  the  Prodigal,  who  has 
a  sharp  and  evil  lesson,  and  comes  crawling 
home  to  claim  the  love  he  had  despised;  but 
for  the  elder  brother,  with  his  blameless  service 
and  his  chilly  heart,  what  hope  is  there  for  him? 
He  must  content  himself — and  perhaps  it  is  not 
so  lean  a  benediction  after  all — with  the  tender 
words,  "Son,  thou  art  ever  with  me,  and  all 
that  I  have  is  thine." 
21 


XLIV 

There  has  been  staying  with  me  for  the  last 
few  days  a  perfectly  delightful  person;  an  old 
man — he  is  nearly  eighty — who  is  exactly  what 
an  old  man  ought  to  be,  and  what  one  would 
desire  to  be  if  one  was  to  grow  old.  Old  people 
are  not  as  a  rule  a  very  encouraging  spectacle. 
One  is  apt  to  feel,  after  seeing  old  people,  that 
it  is  rather  a  tragic  thing  when  life  outruns 
activity,  and  to  hope  that  one  may  never  have 
the  misery  of  octogenarianism.  Sometimes 
they  are  peevish  and  ill-at-ease,  disagreeably 
afflicted  and  obviously  broken;  and  even  when 
they  bear  their  affliction  bravely  and  courage- 
ously, it  is  a  melancholy  business.  It  seems  a 
sad  kind  of  spitefulness  in  nature  that  persons 
should  have  so  much  trouble  to  bear  when  they 
are  tired  and  faint-hearted  and  only  wish  for 
repose.  One  feels  then  that  it  ought  to  be  some- 
how arranged  that  people  should  have  their  share 
of  trouble  in  youth  or  manhood,  when  trouble  is 
not  wholly  uninteresting,  and  when  there  is  even 
a  sort  of  grim  pleasure  in  fighting  it;  but  when  it 
comes  to  having  no  distractions,  to  being  obliged 

322 


Old  Age  323 

to  sit  still  and  suffer  with  no  hope  of  alleviation ; 
when  affection  dies  down  like  an  expiring  flame, 
and  the  failing  nature  seems  involved  in  a  help- 
less sort  of  selfishness,  planning  for  little  com- 
forts, enjoying  tiny  pleasures  with  a  sort  of 
childlike  greediness,  it  is  a  very  pitiful  thing.  I 
remember  an  old  lady  who  lived  with  her  son  in  a 
small  parsonage  full  of  boisterous  children.  They 
were  very  good  to  her,  but  she  was  sadly  in  the 
way.  She  herself  had  lost  almost  all  interest  in 
life;  she  was  deaf  and  infirm  and  cross.  She 
was  condemned  to  eat  the  plainest  of  food;  and 
I  used  to  see  her  mumbling  little  slices  of  stale 
bread,  and  looking  with  malignant  envy  at  the 
children  eating  big  hunches  of  heavy  cake.  It 
was  impossible  to  give  her  any  pleasure,  and 
she  had  no  sort  of  intention  of  pleasing  any  one 
else.  It  was  so  difficult  to  see  what  kind  of 
effect  this  dismal  purgatory  was  meant  to 
have  on  any  human  soul.  She  was  not  improved 
by  suffering — she  grew  daily  more  callous  and 
spiteful  before  one's  eyes.  One  of  her  few 
pleasures  was  to  sit  in  the  garden  pretending  to 
be  asleep,  when  all  the  family  were  out,  and  tell 
tales  of  the  gardener  for  neglecting  his  work,  and 
of  the  maid-servants  for  picking  the  strawberries. 
Yet  she  had  been  a  shrewd  and  kindly  woman 
once,  and  had  brought  up  her  children  well. 
If  she  had  died  a  dozen  years  before  she  would 
have  been  truly  and  tearfuly  mourned,  and  now 


324  The  Silent  Isle 

when  every  one  tacitly  felt  that  she  had  out- 
stayed her  welcome,  she  lingered  on.  She  had 
a  bad  illness  at  one  time,  and  when  I  saw  her, 
for  the  first  time  after  her  recovery,  in  the  fam- 
ily circle,  and  said  something  commonplace 
about  being  glad  to  see  her  so  well,  "Yes,"  she 
said,  looking  round  with  an  air  of  malicious  tri- 
umph, "they  can't  get  rid  of  me  just  yet — I 
know  that  is  what  they  all  feel,  but  they  have 
to  pretend  to  be  glad  I  am  better." 

And  then,  too,  there  is  another  type  of  age 
which  is  hardly  less  painful,  and  that  is  the  com- 
placent and  sententious  old  person,  intolerably 
talkative  and  minutely  confidential,  who  lays 
down  the  law  about  everything,  and  takes  what 
he  calls  the  privileges  of  age,  a  sort  of  professional 
patriarch,  ruddy  and  snowy-haired  and  wide- 
awake, a  terrible  specimen  of  a  well-made 
machine,  which  goes  on  working  long  after  heart 
and  brain  alike  are  atrophied.  I  have  known 
an  old  man  of  this  kind.  He  insisted  on  every- 
thing being  done  for  his  convenience.  He 
breakfasted  very  late,  and  would  allow  no  one 
to  have  any  food  earlier,  saying  that  it  did 
young  people  good  to  wait;  that  he  had  always 
done  work  before  breakfast,  and  that  there  was 
nothing  like  an  empty  stomach  for  keeping  the 
head  clear.  He  would  not  allow  the  morning 
paper  to  be  opened  till  he  came  down;  and  he 
sate  an  intolerable  time  after  breakfast  reading 


Old  Age  325 

extracts  from  it,  often  stopping  in  the  middle 
of  a  sentence  because  some  other  paragraph  had 
caught  his  eye.  He  had  a  horrible  way  of  saying, 
"  Guess  what  has  happened  to  one  of  our  friends; 
I  will  give  you  ten  guesses  each";  and  he  would 
insist  on  all  kinds  of  conjectures  being  hazarded, 
while  he  chuckled  over  the  absurdities  suggested. 
He  took  a  frank  pleasure  in  the  death  of  his 
contemporaries,  and  an  even  franker  pleasure 
in  the  death  of  his  juniors.  '  Then  he  had  one  of 
his  long-suffering  daughters  to  write  letters  for 
him,  and  would  dictate  long,  ungrammatical 
sentences  to  her:  but  he  would  permit  of  no 
erasures,  and  letter  after  letter  would  have  to 
be  torn  up  and  re-written.  He  made  all  the 
party  walk  with  him  before  luncheon,  and  at  his 
pace,  the  same  little  walk  every  day.  I  think 
he  mostly  slept  in  the  afternoon,  or  read  his 
banking  book;  his  talk  was  almost  wholly  about 
himself,  his  virtues,  his  astonishing  health,  his 
perspicacity;  and  he  used  to  lecture  comparative 
strangers  about  their  duties  with  incredible  in- 
solence. The  clergyman's  life  was  made  a  bur- 
den to  him,  and  the  doctor's  as  well.  Though 
he  was  the  most  luxurious  and  comfort-loving  old 
wretch,  his  great  text  was  the  value  of  Spartan 
discipline  for  every  one  else.  If  any  dish  was 
not  exactly  to  his  mind,  he  would  allow  no  one 
to  taste  it,  send  it  away,  and  complain  bitterly 
that  even  his  simple  wants  could  not  be  supplied. 


326  The  Silent  Isle 

Even  when  he  got  more  infirm  and  took  most 
of  his  food  in  seclusion,  he  ordered  the  meals  for 
the  rest  of  the  household;  he  could  not  bear 
to  think  of  their  having  anything  to  eat  of 
which  he  did  not  himself  approve.  He  used  to 
make  every  one  go  to  bed  before  him,  and 
would  even  look  into  their  rooms  to  see  that 
they  were  not  reading  in  bed.  It  was  all  so 
virtuous  and  sensible  that  it  was  impossible  to 
argue  with  him,  and  I  used  to  suffer  from 
an  insane  desire  to  pull  his  chair  away  from 
under  him  while  he  sate  lecturing  the  com- 
pany about  the  way  to  attain  old  age.  Here, 
too,  it  was  impossible  to  see  the  purpose 
with  which  the  unhappy  old  man  was  being 
encouraged  by  nature  and  destiny  to  this 
hideous  and  tyrannical  self-deception,  this 
ruthless  piling  up  of  the  materials  for  disillusion- 
ment in  a  higher  sphere.  It  seemed  as  if  he 
were  being  by  his  very  vigour  and  virtue  deliber- 
ately trained  for  ineradicable  conceit  and  com- 
placency. If  his  relations  came  to  see  him, 
they  were  lectured  on  their  inefficiency;  if  they 
stayed  away,  they  were  reproached  for  their 
want  of  natural  affection.  It  seemed  absolutely 
impossible  to  bring  any  conception  home  to  him, 
wrapped  as  he  was  in  armour  of  impenetrable 
self-satisfaction. 

But  the  old  friend  of  whom  I  spoke  is  entirely 
removed  from  either  of  these  shadows  of  age. 


Old  Age  327 

He  is  infirm,  but  not  ill ;  he  is  infinitely  courteous 
and  gracious,  grateful  for  the  smallest  kindness, 
determined  not  to  interfere  with  any  one's  con- 
venience. My  servants  simply  adore  him,  wel- 
come him  like  an  angel,  and  see  him  depart  with 
tears.  He  knows  all  about  them,  and  keeps  all 
the  details  of  their  families  in  his  mind.  He 
never  talks  of  himself,  but  has  a  perfectly  gen- 
uine and  unaffected  interest  in  other  people. 
He  is  endlessly  tolerant  and  sweet-tempered;  and 
sometimes  will  drop  a  little  sweet  and  mellow 
maxim,  the  ripest  fruit  of  sunny  experience. 
One  feels  in  his  presence  that  this  is  what  life 
is  meant  to  do  for  us  all,  if  it  were  not  for  the 
strange  admixture  of  irritabilities  and  selfish- 
nesses, so  natural  and  yet  so  ugly,  which  lie  in 
wait  for  so  many  of  us.  One  of  the  most  beauti- 
ful things  about  him  is  his  tenderness.  He  talks 
of  his  old  friends  who  have  taken  their  departure 
before  him,  with  a  perfect  simplicity,  while  I  have 
seen  the  tears  gather  and  suddenly  overbrim  his 
eyes.  He  seems  to  have  no  personal  regrets  or 
hopes ;  but  to  have  transferred  them  all  to  other 
people.  Yet  he  does  not  keep  his  friends  in 
mind  in  a  professional  way  as  a  matter  of  duty ; 
his  thoughts  are  simply  full  of  them.  He  does 
no  work,  writes  few  letters,  reads  a  little;  he 
sometimes  smilingly  accuses  himself  of  being 
lazy;  and  yet  his  presence  and  his  unconscious 
sweetness  are  the  most  powerful  influence  for 


328  The  Silent  Isle 

good  I  have  ever  seen.  He  makes  it  appear 
unreasonable  and  silly  to  fret  or  fuss  or  fume; 
and  yet  he  is  shrewd  and  humorous,  and  enjoys 
the  display  of  human  weaknesses.  He  is  never 
shocked  at  anything,  nor  ashamed  of  any  one. 
He  likes  people  to  follow  their  bent  and  to  do 
things  in  their  own  way.  He  never  seems  in  the 
way;  he  loves  to  have  children  about  him,  and 
they  talk  to  him  as  they  talk  to  each  other.  One 
has  no  sense  of  rigid  morality  or  righteousness 
in  his  presence ;  it  only  seems  the  most  beautiful 
thing  in  the  world  to  be  good  and  kind,  as  well 
as  the  easiest.  I  do  not  think  that  he  was  always 
a  very  happy  man ;  he  had  an  anxious  and  rather 
sombre  temperament.  He  said  to  me  once, 
laughing,  that  the  lines : 

"There's  not  a  joy  the  world  can  give 
Like  those  it  takes  away," 

were,  in  his  experience,  quite  untrue,  and  he 
added  that  his  own  old  age  had  been  like  a 
pleasant  holiday  to  him. 

It  is  strange  to  reflect  how  seldom  such  a 
figure  of  gracious  age  has  ever  been  represented 
in  a  book.  I  cannot  recall  a  single  instance. 
In  Dickens  the  old  are  generally  either  malignant 
or  hypocritical,  or  simply  imbecile;  in  Thackeray 
they  are  either  sentimental  or  of  the  wicked  fairy 
type,  full  of  indomitable  relish  for  life.  In 
Shakespeare  they  are  shadowy  and  broken;  in 


Old  Age  329 

Wordsworth  they  relentlessly  improve  the  oc- 
casion. What  one  desires  to  see  depicted  is 
some  figure  that  has  gained  in  gentleness  and 
tolerance  without  losing  shrewdness  and  per- 
ception; who  is  as  much  interested  as  ever  in 
seeing  the  game  played,  without  being  enviously 
desirous  to  take  a  hand.  The  thing  is  so  per- 
fectly beautiful  when  it  occurs  in  real  life  that 
it  is  hard  to  see  why  it  should  not  be  represented. 


XLV 

I  seem  to  remember  having  lately  seen  at  the 
Zoo  a  strange  and  melancholy  fowl,  of  a  tortoise- 
shell  complexion,  glaring  sullenly  from  a  cage, 
with  that  curious  look  of  age  and  toothlessness 
that  eagles  have,  from  the  overlapping  of  the 
upper  mandible  of  the  beak  above  the  lower;  it 
was  labelled  the  Monkey-eating  Eagle.  Its  food 
lay  untasted  on  the  floor;  it  much  preferred,  no 
doubt,  and  from  no  fault  of  its  own,  poor  thing, 
a  nice,  plump,  squalling  baboon  to  the  finest  of 
chops  without  the  fun! 

But  the  name  set  me  thinking,  and  brought 
to  mind  a  very  different  kind  of  creature,  from 
whom  I  have  suffered  much  of  late,  the  Eagle- 
eating  Monkey,  by  which  I  mean  the  writer  of 
bad  books  about  great  people.  I  had  personally 
always  supposed  that  I  would  rather  read  even  a 
poor  book  about  a  real  human  being  than  the 
cleverest  of  books  about  imaginary  people;  at 
least  I  thought  so  till  I  was  obliged  to  read  a 
large  number  of  memoirs  and  biographies,  writ- 
ten some  by  stupid  painstaking  people,  and 
some  by  clever  aggravating  people,  about  a 
number  of  celebrated  persons. 

33o 


The  Eagle-Eating  Monkey    331 

The  stupid  book  is  tiresome  enough,  because 
it  ends  by  making  one  feel  that  there  is  a  real 
human  being  whom  one  cannot  get  at  behind  all 
the  tedious  paragraphs,  like  some  one  stirring 
and  coughing  behind  a  screen — or  even  more 
like  the  outline  of  a  human  figure  covered  up 
with  a  quilt,  so  that  one  can  just  infer  which 
is  the  head  and  which  the  feet,  but  with  the  out- 
lines all  overlaid  with  a  woolly  padded  texture 
of  meaningless  words.  Such  biographers  as 
these  are  hardly  monkey-eating  eagles.  They 
are  rather  monkeys  who  would  eat  a  live  eagle 
if  they  could  catch  one,  and  will  mangle  a  dead 
one  if  they  can  find  him.  The  marvel  is  that 
with  material  at  their  command,  with  friends  of 
their  victim  to  interrogate,  and  sometimes  even 
with  a  personal  knowledge  of  him,  they  can  yet 
contrive  to  avoid  telling  one  anything  interesting 
or  characteristic.  The  only  points  which  seem 
to  strike  them  are  the  points  in  which  their  hero 
resembled  other  people,  not  the  points  in  which 
he  differed  from  others.  They  tell  you  that 
they  remember  an  interesting  conversation 
with  the  great  man,  and  go  on  to  say  that  no 
words  could  do  justice  to  the  charm  of  his  talk. 
Or  they  will  tell  you  his  views  on  Free  Trade  or 
the  Poor  Law,  and  quote  long  extracts  from  his 
speeches  and  public  utterances.  But  they  never 
admit  one  behind  the  scenes,  either  because  they 
were  never  there  themselves,  or  did  not  know  it 


332  The  Silent  Isle 

when  they  were.  Or,  worse  still,  they  will  say 
that  they  do  not  think  it  decorous  to  violate  the 
privacy  of  his  domestic  circle,  with  the  result 
that  there  comes  out  a  figure  like  the  statue  of 
a  statesman  in  a  public  garden,  in  bronze  frock  - 
coatand  trousers,  with  aroll  of  paper  in  his  hand, 
addressing  the  world  in  general,  with  the  rain 
dripping  from  his  nose  and  his  coat-tails. 

That  is  a  very  bad  kind  of  biography;  and  the 
worst  of  it  is  that  it  is  often  the  result  of  a 
pompous  consciousness  of  virtue  and  fidelity, 
which  argues  that  because  a  man  disliked 
personal  paragraphs  about  his  favourite  dishes 
and  his  private  amusements,  when  he  was  alive, 
he  would  therefore  resent  a  picture  of  his  real  life 
being  drawn  when  he  was  dead;  and  this  in- 
convenient decorum  arises  from  a  deep-seated 
poverty  of  imagination,  which  regards  death  as 
converting  all  alike  into  a  species  of  angels,  and 
which  can  only  conceive  of  heaven  as  a  sort 
of  cathedral,  with  the  spirits  of  eminent  men 
employed  as  canons  in  perpetual  residence. 
Thus  it  is  bad  biography  because  it  is  false  bio- 
graphy, emphasising  virtues  and  omitting  faults, 
and,  what  is  almost  worse,  omitting  character- 
istic traits. 

But  it  is  not  the  worst  kind  of  biography. 
The  joy  of  the  real  eagle-eating  biographer 
is  to  do  what  Tennyson  bluntly  described 
as  ripping  up  people  like  pigs,  and  violating 


Biography  333 

not  privacy  but  decency;  sweeping  together 
odious  little  anecdotes,  recording  meannesses 
and  weaknesses  and  sillinesses,  all  the  things 
of  which  the  subject  himself  was  no  doubt 
heartily  ashamed  and  discarded  as  eagerly  as 
possible.  Such  biographies  give  one  the  sense 
of  a  man  diving  in  sewers,  grubbing  in  middens, 
prying  into  cupboards,  peeping  round  corners. 
To  try  as  far  as  possible  to  surprise  your  hero, 
and  to  catch  him  off  his  guard,  is  a  very  different 
thing  from  being  frank  and  candid.  I  remember 
once  coming  upon  the  track  of  one  of  these  ghouls. 
He  was  writing  a  Life  of  a  somewhat  eccentric 
politician,  and  wrote  to  me  asking  me  to  obtain 
for  him  a  sight  of  a  certain  document.  I  for- 
warded his  letter  to  the  relatives  of  the  man  in 
question.  What  was  my  surprise  when  they 
replied  that  the  biographer  was  not  only  wholly 
unauthorised  by  themselves,  but  that  they  had 
written  to  him  to  remonstrate  against  his  ex- 
pressed intention,  and  to  beg  him  to  desist. 
I  forwarded  the  letter  to  him,  and  added  some 
comments  of  my  own.  The  only  result  was 
that  he  replied  regretting  the  opposition  of  the 
relatives,  saying  that  the  life  of  a  public  man 
was  public  property,  and  that  he  thought  it 
his  duty  to  continue  his  researches.  The  book 
appeared,  and  a  vile  rag-bag  it  was,  like  the  life 
of  a  man  written  by  a  private  detective  from  the 
reminiscences  of  under-servants.     The  worst  of 


334  The  Silent  Isle 

it  is  that  such  a  compilation  brings  a  man 
money,  because  there  are  always  plenty  of 
people  who  like  to  dabble  in  mud;  and  a  ghoul 
is  the  most  impervious  of  beings,  probably  be- 
cause a  ghoul  of  this  species  regards  himself 
merely  as  an  unprejudiced  seeker  after  truth, 
and  claims  to  be  what  he  would  call  a  realist. 

The  reason  why  such  realism  is  bad  art  is  not 
because  the  details  are  untrue,  but  because  the 
proportion  is  wrong.  One  cannot  tell  everything 
in  a  biography,  unless  one  is  prepared  to  write  on 
the  scale  of  a  volume  for  each  week  of  the  hero's 
life.  The  art  of  the  biographer  is  to  select  what 
is  salient  and  typical,  not  what  is  abnormal  and 
negligible;  what  he  should  aim  at  is  to  suggest, 
by  skilful  touches,  a  living  portrait.  If  the 
subject  is  bald  and  wrinkled,  he  must  be  painted 
so.  But  there  is  no  excuse  for  trying  to  depict 
his  hero's  toe-nails,  unless  there  is  a  very  valid 
reason  for  doing  so.  And  there  is  still  less 
excuse  for  painting  them  so  big  that  one  can  see 
little  else  in  the  picture!  Ex  ungne  leonem, 
says  the  proverb;  but  it  is  a  scientific  and  not 
an  artistic  maxim. 

One  sometimes  wonders  what  will  be  the  fu- 
ture of  biographies;  how,  as  libraries  get  fuller 
and  records  increase,  it  will  be  possible  ever  to 
write  the  lives  of  any  but  men  of  prime  import- 
ance. I  suppose  the  difficulty  will  solve  itself  in 
some  perfectly  simple  and  obvious  manner;  but 


Biography  335 

the  obstacle  is  that,  as  reading  gets  more  com- 
mon, the  circle  of  trivial  people  who  are  inter- 
ested in  trousers  and  toe-nails  and  in  little  else 
does  undoubtedly  increase.  Moreover,  instead 
of  fewer  biographies  being  written,  more  and 
more  people  seem  to  be  commemorated  in  stod- 
gy volumes ;  and  further,  the  selection  could  not 
be  made  by  authority,  because  the  kind  of  lives 
that  are  wanted  are  not  the  lives  of  dull  im- 
portant people,  but  the  lives  of  interesting  and 
unimportant  people  who  have  given  their  vivid- 
ness and  originality  to  life  itself,  to  talk  and 
letters  and  complex  relationships;  we  do  not 
want  the  lives  of  people  who  have  prosed  on 
platforms  and  bawled  at  the  openings  of  bazaars. 
They  have  said  their  say,  and  we  have  heard 
as  much  as  we  need  to  hear  of  their  views 
already.  But  I  know  half-a-dozen  people,  of 
whose  words  and  works  probably  no  record 
whatever  will  be  made,  whose  lives,  if  they 
could  be  painted,  would  be  more  interesting 
than  any  novel,  and  more  inspiring  than  any 
sermon ;  who  have  not  taken  things  for  granted, 
but  have  made  up  their  own  minds;  and,  what 
is  more,  have  really  had  minds  to  make  up; 
who  have  said,  day  after  day,  fine,  humorous, 
tender,  illuminating  things;  who  have  loved 
life  better  than  routine,  and  ideas  better  than 
success;  who  have  really  enriched  the  blood  of 
the   world,    instead   of  feebly   adulterating   it; 


336  The  Silent  Isle 

who  have  given  their  companions  zest  and  joy, 
trenchant  memories  and  eager  emotions :  but  the 
whole  process  has  been  so  delicate,  so  evasive, 
so  informal,  that  it  seems  impossible  to  re- 
capture the  charm  in  heavy  words.  A  man 
who  would  set  himself  to  write  the  life  of  one 
of  these  delightful  people,  instead  of  adding  to 
the  interminable  stream  of  tiresome  romances 
which  inundate  us,  might  leave  a  very  fine 
legacy  to  the  world.  It  would  mean  an  im- 
mense amount  of  trouble,  and  the  cultivation 
of  a  Boswcllian  memory — for  such  a  book 
would  consist  largely  of  recorded  conversa- 
tions— but  what  a  hopeful  and  uplifting  thing 
it  would  be  to  read  and  re-read! 

The  difficulty  is  that  to  a  perceptive  man — 
and  none  but  a  man  of  the  finest  perception 
could  do  it, — an  eagle-eating  eagle,  in  fact — it 
would  seem  a  ghoulish  and  a  treacherous  busi- 
ness. He  would  feel  like  an  interviewer  and  like 
a  spy.  It  would  have  to  be  done  in  a  noble, 
self-denying  sort  of  secrecy,  amassing  and  re- 
cording day  by  day ;  and  he  would  never  be  able 
to  let  his  hero  suspect  what  was  happening,  or 
the  gracious  spontaneity  would  vanish;  for  the 
essence  of  such  a  life  and  such  talk  as  I  have 
described  is  that  they  should  be  wholly  frank 
and  unconsidered;  and  the  thought  of  the  pre- 
sence of  the  note-taking  spectator  would  over- 
shadow its  radiance  at  once. 


A  Boswell !  337 

There  is  a  task  for  a  patient,  unambitious, 
perceptive  man!  He  must  be  a  man  of  infinite 
leisure,  and  he  must  be  ready  to  take  a  large 
risk  of  disappointment;  for  he  must  outlive 
his  subject,  and  he  must  be  willing  to  sacrifice 
all  other  opportunities  of  artistic  creation. 
But  he  might  write  one  of  the  great  books  of 
the  world,  and  win  a  secure  seat  upon  the  Muses' 
Hill. 
22 


XLVI 

I  have  been  reading  all  the  old  Shelley  litera- 
ture lately,  Hogg  and  Trelawny  and  Medwin 
and  Mrs.  Shelley,  and  that  terrible  piece  of 
analysis,  The  Real  Shelley.  Hogg's  Life  of 
Shelley  is  an  incomparable  book ;  I  should  put 
it  in  the  first  class  of  biographies  without 
hesitation.  Of  course,  it  is  only  a  fragment; 
and  much  of  it  is  frankly  devoted  to  the  say- 
ings and  doings  of  Hogg;  it  is  none  the  worse 
for  that.  It  is  an  intensely  humorous  book, 
in  the  first  place.  There  are  marvellous  epi- 
sodes in  it,  splendid  extravaganzas  like  the 
story  of  Hogg's  stay  in  Dublin,  where  he  locked 
the  door  of  his  bedroom  for  security,  and  the 
boy  Pat  crept  through  the  panel  of  the  door  to 
get  his  boots  and  keep  them  from  him,  and  a 
man  in  the  room  below  pushed  up  a  plank  in 
the  floor  that  he  might  converse,  not  with  Hogg, 
but  with  the  man  in  the  room  above  him; 
there  is  the  anecdote  of  the  little  banker  who 
was  convinced  that  Wordsworth  was  a  poet 
because  he  had  trained  himself  to  write  in  the 
dark  if  he  woke  up   and  had  an  inspiration. 

338 


Shelley  339 

There  is  the  story  of  the  Chevalier  D'Arblay, 
and  his  departure  to  France ;  and  the  description 
of  his  correspondence,  in  which  he  said  for 
years  that  he  was  inconsolable  and  suffering 
inconceivable  anguish  at  being  obliged  to  absent 
himself  from  his  wife;  yet  never  able  to  assign 
any  reason  for  his  stay.  Then,  too,  the  whole 
book  is  written  in  the  freshest  and  most  crisp 
style,  with  a  rare  zest,  that  gives  the  effect  of 
the  conversation  of  an  irrepressibly  impudent 
and  delightful  person.  The  picture  of  Shelley 
himself  is  delightfully  drawn;  it  is  a  perfect 
mixture  of  rapturous  admiration  of  Shelley's 
fine  qualities,  with  an  acute  perception  of  his 
absurdities.  The  picture  of  Shelley  at  Oxford, 
asleep  before  the  fire,  toasting  his  little  curly 
head  in  the  heat,  or  reading  the  Iliad  by  the 
glow  of  the  embers,  seems  to  bring  one  nearer 
to  the  poet  than  anything  else  that  is  recorded 
of  him.  I  cannot  think  why  the  book  is 
not  more  universally  known;  it  seems  to  me 
one  of  the  freshest  pieces  of  biography  in  the 
language. 

Trelawny's  Memorials  are  interesting,  and 
contain  the  solemn  and  memorable  scene  of 
the  cremation  of  Shelley 's  remains — one  of  the 
most  vivid  and  impressive  narratives  I  know. 
Then  there  are  the  chapters  of  Leigh  Hunt's 
Autobiography  which  deal  with  Shelley,  a 
little  overwrought  perhaps,  but  real  biography 


34°  The  Silent  Isle 

for  all  that,  and  interesting  as  bringing  out  the 
contrast  between  the  simplicity  and  generosity 
of  Shelley  and  the  affectation,  bad  breeding, 
and  unscrupulous  selfishness  of  Byron.  Med- 
win's  Biography  and  Mrs.  Shelley's  Memorials 
are  worthless,  because  they  attempt  to  idealise 
and  deify  the  poet;  and  then  there  is  The  Real 
Shelley,  which  is  like  a  tedious  legal  cross-ex- 
amination of  a  highly  imaginative  and  sensitive 
creature  by  a  shrewd  and  boisterous  barrister. 
It  would  be  very  difficult  to  compose  a  formal 
biography  of  Shelley,  because  he  was  such  a 
vague,  imaginative,  inconsistent  creature.  The 
documentary  evidence  is  often  wholly  contra- 
dictory, for  the  simple  reason  that  Shelley 
had  no  conception  of  accuracy.  He  did  not, 
I  am  sure,  deliberately  invent  what  was  not 
true;  but  he  had  a  very  lively  imagination,  and 
was  capable  of  amplifying  the  smallest  hints 
into  elaborate  theories;  his  memory  was  very 
faulty,  and  he  could  construct  a  whole  series 
of  mental  pictures  which  were  wholly  incon- 
sistent with  facts.  It  seems  clear,  too,  that 
he  was  much  under  the  influence  of  opium  at 
various  times,  and  that  his  dreams  and  fancies, 
when  he  was  thus  affected,  presented  them- 
selves to  him  as  objective  facts.  But,  for  all 
that,  it  is  not  at  all  difficult  to  form  a  very 
real  impression  of  the  man.  He  was  one  of 
those  strange,  unbalanced  creatures  that  never 


Shelley  341 

reach  maturity;  he  was  a  child  all  his  short  life; 
he  had  the  generosity,  the  affection,  the  im- 
pulsiveness of  a  child,  and  he  had,  too,  the 
timidity,  the  waywardness,  the  excitability 
of  a  child.  If  a  project  came  into  his  mind, 
he  flung  himself  into  it  with  the  whole  force 
of  his  nature;  it  was  imperatively  necessary 
that  he  should  at  once  execute  his  design.  No 
considerations  of  prudence  or  common-sense 
availed  to  check  him;  life  became  intolerable 
to  him  if  he  could  not  gratify  his  whim.  His 
abandonment  of  his  first  wife,  his  elopement 
with  Mary  Godwin,  are  instances  of  this; 
what  could  be  more  amazing  than  his  deliberate 
invitation  to  his  first  wife,  after  his  flight  with 
Mary,  that  she  should  come  and  join  the  party 
in  a  friendly  way?  He  preserved,  too,  that 
characteristic  of  the  child,  when  confronted 
with  a  difficult  and  disagreeable  situation, 
of  saying  anything  that  came  into  his  head 
which  seemed  to  offer  a  solution;  the  child 
does  not  invent  an  elaborate  falsification;  it 
simply  says  whatever  will  untie  the  knot  quick- 
est, without  reference  to  facts.  If  we  bear  in 
mind  this  natural  and  instinctive  childlikeness 
in  Shelley,  we  have  the  clue  to  almost  all  his 
inconsistencies  and  entanglements.  Most  peo- 
ple, as  they  grow  up,  and  as  the  complicated 
fabric  of  society  makes  itself  clear  to  them, 
begin  to  arrange  their  life  in  sympathy  with  con- 


342  The  Silent  Isle 

ventional  ideals.  They  learn  that  if  they  gratify 
their  inclinations  unreservedly,  they  will  have 
a  heavy  price  to  pay;  and  on  the  whole  they 
find  it  more  convenient  to  recognise  social 
limitations,  and  to  get  what  pleasure  they  can 
inside  the  narrow  enclosure.  But  Shelley  never 
grasped  this  fact.  He  believed  that  all  the 
difficulties  of  life  and  most  of  its  miseries  would 
melt  away  if  only  people  would  live  more  in 
the  light  of  simple  instinct  and  impulse.  He 
never  had  any  real  knowledge  of  human  beings. 
The  history  of  his  life  is  the  history  of  a 
series  of  extravagant  admirations  for  people, 
followed  by  no  less  extravagant  disillusion- 
ments.  Of  course,  his  circumstances  fostered  his 
tendencies.  Though  he  was  often  in  money 
difficulties,  he  knew  that  there  was  always 
money  in  the  background;  indeed,  he  was  too 
fond  of  announcing  himself  as  the  heir  to  a 
large  property  in  Sussex.  One  cannot  help 
wondering  what  Shelley's  life  would  have  been 
if  he  had  been  born  poor  and  obscure,  like  Keats, 
and  if  he  had  been  obliged  to  earn  his  living. 
Still  more  curious  it  is  to  speculate  what  would 
have  become  of  him  if  he  had  lived  to  inherit 
his  baronetcy  and  estates.  He  was  anticipat- 
ing his  inheritance  so  fast  that  he  would  proba- 
bly have  found  himself  a  poor  man;  but,  on 
the  other  hand,  his  powers  were  rapidly  matur- 
ing.    He  would  have  been  a  terrible  person  to 


Shelley  343 

be  responsible  for,  because  one  could  never 
have  known  what  he  would  do  next;  all  one 
could  have  felt  sure  of  would  have  been  that  he 
would  carry  out  his  purpose,  whatever  it  might 
be,  with  indomitable  self-will.  It  is  also  curious 
to  think  what  his  relations  would  have  been 
with  his  wife.  Mrs.  Shelley  was  a  conventional 
woman,  with  a  high  ideal  of  social  respectability. 
A  woman,  who  used  to  make  a  great  point  of 
attending  the  Anglican  services  in  Italy  was 
probably  morbidly  anxious  to  atone,  if  possible, 
for  the  one  error  of  her  youth.  It  is  difficult 
to  believe  that  Shelley  would  have  continued 
to  live  with  his  wife  for  very  long.  Even  his 
theory  of  free  love  was  a  very  inconsistent  one. 
The  essence  of  it  is  that  the  two  parties  to  the 
compact  should  weary  of  their  union  simulta- 
neously. Shelley  seems  to  have  felt  that  he  had 
a  right  to  break  off  relations  whenever  he  felt 
inclined;  how  he  would  have  viewed  it  if  his 
partner  had  insisted  on  leaving  him  for  an- 
other lover,  while  his  own  passion  was  still 
unabated,  is  not  so  clear.  He  would  no  doubt 
have  overwhelmed  her  with  moral  indignation. 
But  in  spite  of  all  his  faults  there  is  some- 
thing indescribably  attractive  about  the  per- 
sonality of  Shelley.  His  eager  generosity,  his 
loyalty,  his  tenderness,  are  irresistible.  One 
feels  that  he  would  always  have  responded  to 
a  frank  and  simple  appeal.     A  foil  for  his  virtues 


344  The  Silent  Isle 

is  provided  by  the  character  of  Byron,  whose 
nauseous  affectations,  animal  coarseness,  nig- 
gardliness, except  where  his  own  personal  com- 
fort was  involved,  and  deep-seated  snobbishness, 
makes  Shelley  into  an  angel  of  light.  Shelley 
seems  to  have  been  almost  the  only  person  who 
ever  evoked  the  true  and  frank  admiration  of 
Byron,  and  retained  his  regard.  On  the  other 
hand,  Shelley,  who  began  by  idolising  Byron, 
seems  to  have  gradually  become  aware  of  the 
ugly  selfishness  of  his  character. 

But  Shelley  himself  evokes  a  sort  of  deep 
compassionateness  and  affection,  such  as  is 
evoked  by  an  impulsive,  headstrong,  engaging 
child.  One  desires  to  have  sheltered  him,  to 
have  advised  him,  to  have  managed  his  affairs 
for  him;  one  ends  by  forgiving  him  all,  or 
nearly  all.  His  character  was  essentially  a 
noble  one;  he  hated  all  oppression,  injustice, 
arrogance,  selfishness,  coarseness,  cruelty.  When 
he  erred,  he  erred  like  a  child,  not  coldly  and 
unscrupulously,  but  carried  away  by  intensity 
of  desire.  It  may  seem  a  curious  image, 
but  one  cannot  help  feeling  that  if  Shelley 
had  been  contemporary  with  and  brought 
into  contact  with  Christ,  he  would  have  been 
an  ardent  follower  and  disciple,  and  would  have 
been  regarded  with  a  deep  tenderness  and  love; 
his  sins  would  have  been  swiftly  forgiven.  I 
do  not  wish  to  minimise  them;  he  behaved  un- 


Shelley  345 

gratefully,  inconsiderately,  wilfully.  His  usage 
of  his  first  wife  is  a  deep  blot  on  his  character. 
But  in  spite  of  his  desertion  of  her,  and  his 
abduction  of  Mary  Godwin,  his  life  was  some- 
how an  essentially  innocent  one.  It  is  pos- 
sible to  paint  his  career  in  dark  colours;  it  is 
impossible  to  say  that  his  example  is  an  inspir- 
ing one;  he  is  the  kind  of  character  that  society 
is  almost  bound  to  take  precautions  against; 
he  was  indifferent  to  social  morality,  he  was 
regardless  of  truth,  neglectful  of  commercial 
honesty;  but  for  all  that  one  feels  more  hope- 
ful about  the  race  that  can  produce  a  Shelley. 
We  must  be  careful  not  to  condone  his  faults 
in  the  light  of  his  poetical  genius;  but  for  all 
that,  if  Shelley  had  never  written  a  line  of  his 
exquisite  poetry,  I  cannot  help  feeling  that  if 
one  had  known  him,  one  would  have  felt  the 
same  eager  regard  for  him.  One  cannot  draw 
near  to  a  personality  by  a  process  of  logic. 
But  one  fact  emerges.  There  is  little  doubt 
that  one  of  the  most  oppressive,  injurious,  de- 
testable forces  in  the  world  is  the  force  of  con- 
ventionality, that  instinct  which  makes  men 
judge  a  character  and  an  action,  not  by  its 
beauty  or  by  its  merits,  but  by  comparing  it 
with  the  standard  of  how  the  normal  man  would 
regard  it.  This  vast  and  intolerable  medium 
of  dulness,  which  penetrates  our  lives  like  a 
thick,  dark  mist,  allowing  us  only  to  see  the 


346  The  Silent  Isle 

object  in  range  of  our  immediate  vision,  hostile 
to  all  originality,  crushingly  respectable,  that 
dictates  our  hours,  our  occupations,  our  amuse- 
ments, our  emotions,  our  religion,  is  the  most 
ruthless  and  tyrannical  thing  in  the  world. 
Against  this  Shelley  fought  with  all  his  might; 
his  error  was  to  hate  it  so  intensely  as  to  fail 
to  see  the  few  grains  of  gold,  the  few  principles 
of  kindness,  of  honesty,  of  consideration,  of 
soberness,  that  it  contains.  He  paid  dearly  for 
his  error,  in  the  consciousness  of  the  contempt 
and  infamy  which  were  heaped  upon  his  quiver- 
ing spirit.  But  he  did  undoubtedly  love  truth, 
beauty,  and  purity.  One  has  to  get  on  the 
right  side  of  his  sins  and  indulgences,  his  gro- 
tesque political  theories,  his  inconsistencies;  but 
when  once  one  has  apprehended  the  real  char- 
acter, one  is  never  in  any  doubt  again. 


XLVII 

There  can  surely  be  few  pieces  of  literary  por- 
traiture in  the  world  more  unpleasant  than 
the  portrait  drawn  of  Byron  in  1822  by  Leigh 
Hunt.  It  gave  great  offence  to  Byron's  friends, 
who  insisted  upon  his  noble  and  generous 
qualities,  and  maintained  that  Leigh  Hunt  was 
taking  a  spiteful  revenge  for  what  he  conceived 
to  be  the  indignity  and  injustice  with  which 
Byron  had  treated  him.  Leigh  Hunt  was  un- 
doubtedly a  trying  person  in  some  ways.  He 
did  not  mind  dipping  his  hand  into  a  friendly 
pocket,  and  he  had  a  way  of  flinging  himself 
helplessly  upon  the  good  nature  of  his  friends, 
a  want  of  dignity  in  the  way  he  accepted  their 
assistance,  which  went  far  to  justify  the  identi- 
fication of  him  with  the  very  disagreeable  por- 
trait which  Dickens  drew  of  him,  as  Harold 
Skimpole  in  Bleak  House.  But  for  all  that  he 
was  an  affectionate,  candid,  and  eminently 
placable  person,  and  if  it  is  true  that  he  darkened 
the  shadows  of  Byron's  temperament,  and  in- 
sisted too  strongly  on  his  undesirable  qualities, 
there  is  no  reason  to  think  that  the  portrait  he 

347 


348  The  Silent  Isle 

drew  of  Byron  was  not  in  the  main  a  true  one; 
and  it  may  be  added  that  a  vast  amount  of 
generosity  and  nobility  require  to  be  thrown 
into  the  opposite  scale  before  Byron  can  be 
rehabilitated  or  made  worthy  of  the  least 
admiration  and  respect. 

Byron  had  invited  Leigh  Hunt  out  to 
Italy,  with  the  design  of  producing,  with  his 
assistance,  a  monthly  Review  of  a  literary  type. 
Leigh  Hunt  came  out  with  his  wife  and  family, 
and  accepted  quarters  under  Byron's  roof. 
Byron  had  already  tired  of  the  scheme  and 
repented  of  his  generosity.  Leigh  Hunt  avers 
that  Byron  was  an  innately  avaricious  man,  and 
that,  though  he  occasionally  lavished  money 
on  some  favourite  scheme,  it  was  only  because, 
though  he  loved  money  much,  he  loved  notoriety 
more.  The  good  angel  of  the  situation  was  Shel- 
ley, who  really  made  all  the  arrangements  for 
Hunt's  sojourn  and  presented  him  with  the 
necessary  furniture  for  his  rooms.  Shelley 
was  certainly  entirely  indifferent  to  money, 
and  profusely  generous.  He  had  begun  by 
admiring  Byron,  with  all  the  enthusiasm  of 
hero-worship,  but  a  closer  acquaintance  had 
revealed  much  that  was  distasteful  and  even 
repugnant  to  him,  and  it  may  safely  be  said  that 
if  he  had  lived  he  would  soon  have  withdrawn 
from  Byron's  society.  Shelley's  ideas  of  moral- 
ity  were  not   conventional;   his   affection    and 


Byron  349 

enthusiasm  for  people  burnt  fiercely  and  waned, 
yet  when  he  sinned,  he  sinned  through  a  genu- 
ine passion.  But  Byron,  according  to  Leigh 
Hunt,  was  a  cold-blooded  libertine,  and  had  no 
conception  of  what  love  meant,  except  as  a 
merely  animal  desire,  which  he  abundantly 
gratified. 

The  awkward  menage  was  established.  Byron 
was  at  the  Casa  Lanfranchi  at  Pisa,  and  gave 
Leigh  Hunt  the  ground  floor.  Leigh  Hunt  de- 
scribes him  as  lounging  about  half  the  day  in  a 
nankeen  jacket  and  white  duck  trousers,  sing- 
ing in  a  swaggering  fashion,  in  a  voice  at  once 
"thin  and  veiled,"  a  boisterous  air  of  Rossini's, 
riding  out  with  pistols  accompanied  by  his  dogs, 
and  sitting  up  half  the  night  to  write  Don  Juan 
over  gin  and  water.  He  was  living  at  the  time 
with  the  Countess  Guiccioli,  who  had  married 
a  man  four  times  her  age,  had  obtained  a  separa- 
tion, and  now  lived  as  Byron's  mistress,  with 
her  father  and  brother  in  the  same  house. 

That  Hunt  should  have  been  willing  to  bring 
his  wife  and  a  growing  family  under  the  same 
roof  does  not  reflect  much  credit  on  him, 
especially  when  he  found  that  Byron  was  not 
averse  to  saying  cynical  and  even  corrupting 
things  to  Hunt's  boys,  when  Hunt  himself 
was  absent.  Mrs.  Leigh  Hunt  took  a  stronger 
line;  she  cordially  disliked  Byron  from  the  first. 
On  one  occasion  when  Byron  said  to  her  that 


350  The  Silent  Isle 

Trelawny  had  been  finding  fault  with  his  morals, 
Mrs.  Leigh  Hunt  said  trenchantly  that  it  was 
the  first  time  she  had  ever  heard  of  them. 

Leigh  Hunt  soon  perceived  that  he  and  Byron 
had  very  little  in  common.  Byron  disliked  his 
familiarity  and  his  airs  of  equality;  while  he 
himself  was  not  long  in  discovering  Byron  to 
be  egotistical  to  the  verge  of  insanity,  child- 
ishly vain  of  his  rank,  ill-natured,  jealous, 
coarse,  inconsiderate,  disloyal,  a  blabber  of 
secrets,  mean,  deceitful.  But  the  glamour  of 
Byron's  fame,  the  romance  that  surrounded 
him,  his  rank,  which  Leigh  Hunt  valued  al- 
most pathetically,  kept  the  amiable  invalid 
— for  such  Leigh  Hunt  was  at  this  time — hang- 
ing on  to  Byron's  skirts  and  claiming  his  pro- 
tection. The  Review  began  with  a  flourish  of 
trumpets,  but  soon  broke  down;  and  finally  the 
very  uncongenial  partnership  was  dissolved. 

One  cannot  pardon  Leigh  Hunt  at  any*  stage. 
He  ought  never  to  have  accepted  the  original 
invitation ;  he  ought  never  to  have  retained  the 
undignified  position  of  a  sort  of  literary  parasite. 
He  endeavoured  to  protect  his  own  self-respect 
by  adopting  a  tone  of  easy  familiarity  with 
Byron,  which  resulted  only  in  galling  his  host; 
and  he  ought  not  to  have  written  his  very  damag- 
ing reminiscences  of  the  period,  though  it  is 
quite  clear  that  he  felt  under  no  obligation 
whatever  to  Byron. 


Byron  35 1 

Still  it  is  a  deeply  interesting  piece  of  por- 
traiture, and  probably  substantially  accurate. 
The  painful  fact  is  that  Byron  was  a  very  ill- 
bred  person.  He  had  drawn  a  prize  in  the 
lottery  of  life,  and  had  obtained,  so  to  speak, 
by  accident  of  birth,  a  position  that  gave  him 
fortuitously  the  consequence  which  numbers  of 
ambitious  men  spend  their  lives  in  trying  to 
obtain.  And  then,  too,  we  must  not  lose  sight 
of  Byron's  genius,  though  it  is  abundantly  clear 
that  all  there  was  of  the  noble  and  beautiful 
in  Byron's  nature  was  entirely  given  to  his  art, 
and  that  outside  of  his  art  there  remained  no- 
thing but  a  temperament  burdened  with  all  the 
ugliest  faults  of  the  artistic  nature,  artificially 
forced  and  developed  by  untoward  circum- 
stance. There  remains  the  perennial  mystery 
of  genius,  which  can  put  into  glowing  words  and 
exquisite  phrases  emotions  which  it  can  con- 
ceive but  cannot  feel.  Leigh  Hunt's  deliberate 
view  of  Byron  is  that  he  did  everything  for 
effect,  that  his  vanity  was  boundless  and  in- 
satiable, and  that  even  his  raptures  were  stage 
raptures.  There  is  little  reason  to  doubt  it. 
Byron's  tumultuous  agonies  of  soul  were  little 
more  than  the  rage  of  the  spoilt  child,  who 
cannot  bear  that  things  should  go  contrary  to 
its  desires.  Byron,  by  concealing  the  causes  of 
his  melancholy,  and  attaching  to  it  a  nobler 
motive,  made  himself  into  a  Hamlet  when  he 


352  The  Silent  Isle 

was  in  reality  only  a  Timon.  What  view  are 
we  to  take  of  Byron's  intervention  in  the  affairs 
of  Greece?  To  fling  oneself  into  a  revolutionary 
movement,  to  sacrifice  money  and  health,  to 
suffer,  to  die,  is  surely  an  evidence  of  enthu- 
siasm and  sincerity?  Leigh  Hunt  would  have 
us  believe  that  this,  too,  was  nothing  but  a 
pose.  He  tells  us  how  the  gift  of  ten  thousand 
pounds  to  the  Greek  Revolutionaries,  which 
was  publicly  announced  by  Byron's  action,  was 
reduced  to  a  loan  of  four  thousand.  He  tells 
the  story  of  the  three  gilded  helmets,  bearing 
the  family  motto,  "Crede  Byron,"  which  the 
poet  offered  to  show  him,  that  he  had  had 
made  for  himself  and  Trelawny  and  Count 
Pietro  Gamba.  The  conclusion  is  irresistible 
that  there  was  a  large  infusion  of  vanity  in 
the  whole  scheme,  and  that  Byron  had  his 
eye  upon  the  world,  here  as  elsewhere.  The 
Greek  expedition  would  exhibit  him  in  a  chi- 
valrous and  romantic  light;  it  might  provide 
him  with  some  excitement,  though  Leigh  Hunt 
maintains  that  Byron  was  physically  and  morally 
a  coward;  and  indeed,  judging  from  what  one 
knows  of  Byron,  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  his 
enthusiasm  was  an  unselfish  one,  or  that  he  was 
deeply  stirred  with  patriotic  emotions,  though 
he  was  perhaps  swayed  by  a  certain  artistic 
sympathy. 

It  may  be  asked,  is  it  not  better  to  put  the 


Byron  353 

most  generous  construction  upon  Byron's  acts, 
to  believe  that  his  was  a  nature  of  high  enthu- 
siasms as  well  as  of  violent  passions,  and  that 
the  needle  fluctuated  between  the  two? 

All  depends  upon  the  mood  in  which  one  ap- 
proaches a  character.  I  confess  myself  that 
the  one  thing  which  seems  to  me  important  and 
interesting  is  to  get  at  the  truth  about  a  man. 
In  the  investigation  of  character  there  is  no- 
thing to  be  said  for  being  a  partisan  and  for  in- 
dulging in  special  pleading,  so  as  to  minimise 
faults  and  magnify  virtues.  My  own  belief  is 
that  Byron  was  an  essentially  worthless  char- 
acter, the  prey  of  impulse,  the  slave  of  desire, 
thirsting  for  distinction  above  everything. 
There  is  nothing  in  his  letters  or  in  his  recorded 
speech  that  would  make  one  think  otherwise; 
his  life  was  devoted  to  the  pursuit  of  pleasure- 
able  excitement,  and  he  cared  little  what  price 
he  paid  for  it.  He  never  seems  to  me  to  have 
admired  gentleness  or  self-restraint  or  modesty, 
or  to  have  desired  to  attain  them.  Indeed, 
I  think  he  gives  the  lie  to  all  the  theories  that 
assert  that  genius  and  influence  must  be  based 
on  some  essential  worthiness  and  greatness  of 
soul. 

23 


XLVIII 

It  is  often  said  that  poets  have  no  biographies 
but  their  own  works,  but  that  is  only  a  half- 
truth.  It  is  to  me  one  of  the  most  delightful 
things  in  the  world  to  follow  the  footsteps  of  a 
poet  about,  in  scenes  perhaps  familiar  to  my- 
self; to  see  how  the  simple  sights  of  earth  and 
sky  struck  fire  from  his  mind,  to  realise  what  he 
thought  about  under  commonplace  conditions. 
I  have  often  stayed,  for  instance,  at  Tan-yr-allt 
in  North  Wales,  where  Shelley  spent  some 
months,  and  where  the  strange  adventure  of  the 
night-attack  by  the  assassin  occurred — a  story 
never  satisfactorily  unravelled;  it  was  a  con- 
stant pleasure  there  to  feel  that  one  was  looking 
at  the  fine  crags  which  Shelley  loved,  so  nobly 
weather-stained  and  ivy-hung,  that  one  was 
threading  the  same  woodland  paths,  and  ram- 
bling on  the  open  moorland  where  he  so  often 
paced.  The  interest,  the  inspiration  of  the 
process  comes  from  the  fact  that  one  sees  how 
genius  transmutes  the  dull  elements  of  life, 
those  elements  which  are  in  reach  of  all  of  us, 
into  thoughts  rich  and  strange.     I  often  think 

354 


Posthumous  Fame  355 

of  the  plum-tree  in  the  tiny  garden  of  Went- 
worth  Place,  where  Keats,  one  languid  spring 
day,  sate  to  hear  the  nightingale  sing,  and 
scribbled  the  Ode  on  loose  half-sheets  of  paper, 
careless  if  they  were  preserved  or  no.  It  makes 
one  discern  the  quality  of  genius  to  realise  how 
there  is  food  for  it  everywhere,  and  how  little 
right  one  has  to  blame  one's  surroundings  for 
not  being  more  suggestive.  Indeed,  I  cannot 
help  feeling  that  the  very  vulgarity  of  Keats's 
circle,  with  its  ill-flavoured  jokes,  its  provincial 
taint,  is  even  more  impressive  than  the  romance 
in  which  Shelley  lived,  because  it  marks  his 
genius  more  impressively.  Shelley  was  at  least 
in  contact  with  interesting  personalities,  while 
Keats's  circle  was  on  the  whole  a  depressing 
one. 

But  the  point  which  has  been  deeply  borne  in 
upon  me,  and  which  we  are  apt,  in  reflecting  on 
the  posthumous  glories  of  men  of  genius,  to 
forget,  is  the  reflection  how  extraordinarily 
scanty  was  the  recognition  which  both  Keats 
and  Shelley  met  with  in  their  lifetime.  Keats 
was  nothing  more  than  an  obscure  poetaster; 
he  had  a  few  friends  who  believed  in  him,  but 
which  of  them  would  have  dared  to  predict  the 
volume  and  magnitude  of  his  subsequent  fame? 
Shelley  was  in  even  worse  case,  for  he  was  re- 
garded by  ordinary  people  as  a  monster  of 
irreligion     and     immorality,     the     custody     of 


356  The  Silent  Isle 

whose  children  had  been  denied  him  by  the  most 
respectable  of  Lord  Chancellors,  on  account 
of  his  detestable  opinions  and  the  infamy  of 
his  mode  of  life.  There  are,  I  will  venture  to 
say,  a  hundred  living  English  writers  who  have 
more,  far  more,  of  the  comfortable  sense  of  re- 
nown, and  its  tangible  rewards,  than  either 
of  these  great  poets  enjoyed  in  his  lifetime. 
Byron  himself,  who  by  the  side  of  Shelley  cuts 
so  deplorable  a  figure,  had  at  least  the  con- 
sciousness of  being  an  intensely  romantic  and 
mysterious  figure,  quickening  the  emotional 
temperature  of  the  world  and  making  its  pulse 
beat  faster.  But  Keats  and  Shelley  worked  on  in 
discouragement  and  obscurity.  It  is  true  that 
they  judged  their  own  work  justly,  and  knew 
within  themselves  that  there  was  a  fiery  quality 
in  what  they  wrote.  But  how  many  poets 
have  fed  themselves  in  vain  on  the  same  hopes, 
have  thought  themselves  unduly  contemned 
and  slighted!  There  is  hardly  a  scribbler  of 
verse  who  has  not  the  same  delusion,  and  who 
has  not  in  chilly  and  comfortless  moments  to 
face  the  fact  that  he  does  not  probably  count 
for  very  much,  after  all,  in  the  scheme  of  things. 
How  hard  it  is  in  the  case  of  Keats  and  Shelley 
to  feel  that  they  had  not  some  inkling  of  all  the 
desirous  worship,  the  generous  praise,  that  has 
surrounded  their  memory  after  their  death! 
How  hard  it  is  to  enter  into  the  bitterness  of 


The  Poet's  Hope  357 

spirit  which  fell  upon  Shelley,  not  once  nor 
twice,  at  the  acrid  contempt  of  reviewers! 
How  hard  it  is  to  put  oneself  inside  the  crush- 
ing sense  of  failure  that  haunted  Keats's  last 
days,  with  death  staring  him  in  the  face! 
Of  course,  one  may  say  that  a  writer  ought  not 
to  depend  upon  any  consciousness  of  fame; 
that  he  ought  to  make  his  work  as  good  as  he 
can,  and  not  care  about  the  verdict.  That  is  a 
fine  and  dignified  philosophy;  but  at  the  same 
time  half  of  the  essence  of  the  writer's  work 
lies  in  its  appeal.  He  may  feel  the  beauty  of 
the  world  with  a  poignant  emotion;  but  his 
work  is  to  make  others  feel  it  too,  and  it  is  im- 
possible that  he  should  not  be  profoundly 
discouraged  if  there  is  no  one  who  heeds  his 
voice.  It  is  not  that  he  craves  for  stupid 
and  conventional  praise  from  men  who  can 
applaud  only  when  they  see  others  applauding. 
What  he  desires  is  to  express  the  kinship,  the 
enthusiasm  of  generous  hearts,  to  make  an 
echo  in  the  souls  of  a  few  like-minded  people. 
He  may  desire  this — nay,  he  must  desire  it, 
if  he  is  to  fulfil  his  own  ideal  at  all.  For  in 
the  minds  of  poets  there  is  the  hope  of  achieve- 
ment, of  creation;  he  dedicates  time  and  thought 
and  endeavour  to  his  work,  and  the  test  of  its 
fineness  and  of  its  worth  is  that  it  should  move 
others.  If  a  man  cannot  have  some  faint  hope 
that  he  is  doing  this,  then  he  had  better  sink 


358  The  Silent  Isle 

back  into  the  crowd,  live  the  life  of  the  world, 
earn  a  wage,  make  a  place  for  himself.  In- 
deed, he  has  no  justification  for  refusing  to 
shoulder  the  accustomed  burden,  unless  he  is 
sure  that  the  task  to  which  he  devotes  himself  is 
better  worth  the  doing;  a  poet  must  always 
be  haunted  by  the  suspicion  that  he  is  but  pleas- 
ing himself  and  playing  indolently  at  a  pretty 
game,  unless  he  can  believe  that  he  is  adding 
something  to  the  sum  of  beauty  and  truth. 
These  visions  of  the  poet  are  very  faint  and 
delicate  things;  there  is  little  of  robust  confi- 
dence about  them,  while  there  are  plenty  of  loud 
and  insistent  voices  on  every  side  of  him  to  tell 
him  that  he  is  shirking  the  work  of  the  world, 
and  that  he  is  not  lifting  a  finger  in  the  cause 
of  humanity  and  progress.  There  are  some  self- 
conscious  artists  who  would  say  that  the  cause 
of  humanity  and  progress  is  not  the  concern  of 
the  artist  at  all;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  you 
will  find  but  few  of  the  great  artists  of  the  ages 
who  have  not  been  thrilled  and  haunted  with 
the  deep  desire  to  help  others,  to  increase  their 
peace  and  joy,  to  interpret  the  riddle  of  the 
world,  to  give  a  motive  for  living  a  fuller 
life  than  the  life  of  the  drudge  and  the  raker  of 
stones  and  dirt. 

But  this  very  absence  of  recognition  and  fame 
was  what  made  the  lives  of  these  two  great 
poets  so  intensely  beautiful;  there  is  hardly  a 


Absence  of  Recognition       359 

great  poet  who  has  achieved  fame  who  has  not 
been  in  a  degree  spoilt  by  the  consciousness  of 
worth  and  influence.  Tennyson,  Pope,  Byron, 
Wordsworth — how  their  lives  were  injured 
by  vanity  and  self-conceit!  Even  Scott  was 
touched  by  the  grossness  of  prosperity,  though 
he  purged  his  fault  in  despair  and  tears.  But 
such  poets  as  did  not  guess  their  own  greatness, 
and  remained  humble  and  peaceable,  how 
much  sweeter  and  gentler  is  their  example, 
walking  humbly  in  the  company  of  the  mighty, 
and  hardly  seeming  to  guess  that  they  are  of  the 
happy  number.  And  thus  we  may  rank  it 
amongst  the  greatest  gifts  that  were  given 
to  Keats  and  Shelley,  though  they  did  not 
know  their  own  felicity,  that  they  were  never 
overshadowed  by  the  approbation  of  the  world, 
and  had  no  touch  of  the  complacent  sense  of 
greatness  that  so  disfigures  the  spirit  of  a  mortal. 


XLIX 

I  have  been  reading  all  to-day  the  Letters  of 
Keats,  a  thing  which  I  do  at  irregular  intervals. 
Perhaps  what  I  am  going  to  say  may  sound 
affected,  but  it  is  perfectly  true:  it  is  a  book 
that  always  has  a  very  peculiar  effect  on  me, 
not  so  much  a  mental  effect  as  what,  for  want 
of  a  better  word,  I  will  call  a  spiritual  effect. 
It  sets  my  soul  on  flame.  I  feel  as  though  I  had 
drawn  near  to  a  spirit  burning  like  a  fiery  lamp, 
and  that  my  own  torpid  and  inert  spirit  had  been 
kindled  at  it.  That  flame  will  burn  out  again, 
as  it  has  burnt  out  many  times  before ;  but  while 
the  fire  still  leaps  and  glances  in  my  heart  I  will 
try  to  put  down  exactly  what  it  makes  me  feel. 
I  believe  there  are  few  books  that  give  one,  in 
the  first  place,  more  of  the  author's  own  heart. 
Is  there  in  the  world  any  book  which  gives  so 
fully  the  youthful,  ebullient  thoughts  of  a  man 
of  the  highest  poetical  genius  as  this?  I  can- 
not recall  any.  Keats,  to  his  brothers,  his 
sister,  and  to  one  or  two  intimate  friends, 
allowed  his  long,  vague  letters  to  be  an  abso- 
lutely intimate  diary  of  what  he  was  thinking. 

360 


Keats  361 

You  see  his  genius  rise  and  flush  and  blaze 
and  grow  cold  again  before  your  eyes.  Not 
to  multiply  instances,  take  the  wonderful  letter 
written  in  October,  181 8,  to  Richard  Wood- 
house,  where  he  sketches  his  ovn  poetical  tem- 
perament, differentiating  it  from  what  he  calls 
the  "  Words  worthian  Character — the  egotisti- 
cally sublime. "  He  goes  on  to  say  that  he  feels 
that  he  has  no  identity  of  his  own,  but  that  he  is 
a  kind  of  sensitive  mirror  on  which  external 
things  imprint  themselves  for  a  lucid  moment 
and  are  gone  again;  he  says  that  it  is  a  torture 
to  him  to  be  in  a  room  with  other  people,  be- 
cause the  identity  of  every  one  presses  on  him 
so  insistently.  He  adds  in  a  fine  elation  that 
"the  faint  conceptions  that  he  has  of  poems  to 
come,  bring  the  blood  frequently  into  his  fore- 
head." 

Such  a  letter  as  this  admits  one  to  the  very 
penetralia  of  the  supremely  artistic  mind — but 
the  wonder  of  Keats 's  confession  is  that  he  saw 
himself  as  clearly  and  distinctly  as  he  saw 
every  one  else.  And  further,  I  do  not  think 
that  there  is  anything  in  literature  that  gives 
one  a  sharper  feeling  of  the  reality  of  genius 
than  to  find  the  immortal  poems,  such  as  La 
Belle  Dame  sans  Merci,  copied  down  in  the 
middle  of  a  letter,  as  an  unconsidered  trifle 
which  may  amuse  his  correspondent. 

Now,  in  saying  this,  I  do  not  for  a  moment 


362  The  Silent  Isle 

say  that  Keats  was  an  entirely  admirable  or 
even  a  wholly  lovable  character — though  his 
tenderness,  his  consideration,  his  affectionate- 
ness  constantly  emerge.  He  had  strongly 
marked  faults:  his  taste  is  often  questionable; 
his  humour  is  frequently  deplorable.  He  makes 
and  repeats  jokes  which  cause  one  to  writhe 
and  blush — he  was,  and  I  say  it  boldly,  occasion- 
ally vulgar;  but  it  is  not  an  innate  vulgarity, 
only  the  superficial  vulgarity  which  comes  of 
living  among  second-rate  suburban  literary 
people.  One  cannot  help  feeling  every  now  and 
then  that  some  of  Keats's  friends  were  really  im- 
possible— but  I  am  glad  that  he  did  not  feel 
them  to  be  so,  that  he  was  loyal  and  generous 
about  them.  There  have  been  great  critics,  of 
whom  Matthew  Arnold  was  one,  who  have  said 
frankly  that  the  aroma  of  Keats's  letters  is  in- 
tolerable. That  does  not  seem  to  me  a  large 
judgment,  but  it  is  quite  an  intelligible  one. 
If  one  has  been  brought  up  in  a  certain  instinct- 
ive kind  of  refinement,  there  are  certain  modes 
of  life,  certain  ways  of  looking  at  things,  which 
grate  hopelessly  upon  one's  idea  of  what  is  re- 
fined; and  perhaps  life  is  not  long  enough  to  try 
and  overcome  it,  to  try  and  argue  oneself  out 
of  it.  I  think  it  is  quite  possible  that  if  one  had 
only  known  Keats  slightly,  one  might  have 
thought  him  a  very  underbred  young  man,  as 
when  he  showed  himself  suspicious  and  ill  at 


Keats  363 

ease  in  the  company  of  Shelley,  because  of  his 
social  standing.  "A  loose,  slack,  ill-dressed 
youth,"  was  Coleridge's  impression  of  Keats, 
when  he  met  him  in  a  lane  near  Highgate. 
But  I  honestly  believe  that  this  would  have 
been  only  an  external  and  superficial  feeling. 
Again,  Keats  as  a  lover  is  undeniably  discon- 
certing. His  zealousness,  his  uncontrolled  luxu- 
riance of  passion,  though  partly  attributable  to 
his  fevered  and  despondent  condition  of  health, 
are  lacking  in  dignity.  But  as  a  friend,  Keats 
seems  to  me  almost  above  praise;  and  I  can 
imagine  that  if  one  had  been  of  his  circle,  and 
had  won  his  regard,  it  would  have  been  difficult 
not  to  have  idealised  him.  He  seems  to  me  to 
have  displayed  that  frank,  affectionate  brother- 
liness,  untainted  by  sentimentality,  which  is 
the  essence  of  equal  friendship;  and  then, 
too,  he  gave  his  heart  and  his  thoughts  and  his 
dreams  to  his  friends  so  prodigally  and  lavishly 
— not  egotistically,  as  some  have  given — with 
no  self-absorption,  no  lack  of  sympathy,  but 
in  the  spirit  of  the  old  fisherman  in  Theocritus, 
who  says  to  his  comrade,  "Come,  be  a  sharer  of 
my  dreams  as  of  my  fishing,"  and  then  tells  his 
pretty  vision.  With  no  lack  of  sympathy,  I 
say,  because  the  lavish  generosity  with  which 
Keats  bestowed  his  money  upon  his  friends, 
when  he  had  but  a  small  store  left  and  when 
financial  difficulties  were  staring  him  in  the  face, 


364  The  Silent  Isle 

is  one  of  the  finest  things  about  him.  There  is 
a  correspondence  with  that  strange,  selfish 
spendthrift  Haydon,  which  shows  the  endless 
trouble  Keats  would  take  to  raise  money  for 
a  friend  when  he  was  in  worse  straits  himself. 
Haydon  treated  him  with  insolent  frankness, 
and  hinted  that  Keats  was  parsimonious  and 
ungenerous;  even  so,  Keats  never  lost  his  tem- 
per, but  described  with  perfect  simplicity  the 
extraordinary  difficulties  he  was  himself  in- 
volved in,  with  as  much  patience  and  good- 
humour  as  though  he  himself  had  been  the 
borrower;  and  the  delicious  letters  that  he 
wrote,  all  through  his  own  anxieties,  to  his  little 
sister  Fanny,  then  a  girl  at  a  boarding-school, 
reveal,  like  nothing  else,  the  faithful  and  tender 
spirit  of  the  boy — for  he  was  hardly  more  than  a 
boy.  Of  course  there  are  letters,  like  those  of 
Lamb  and  FitzGerald,  which  bring  one  very 
close  to  the  spirit  of  the  writer;  but  with 
this  difference,  that  they  rarely  seem  to  lay 
bare  their  inmost  thought;  but  Keats  had  no 
reserve  with  his  best  friends.  He  put  into 
words  the  very  things  that  we  most  of  us  are 
ashamed,  from  a  fear  of  being  accused  of  pose 
and  affectation,  to  reveal — his  loftiest  hopes 
and  aspirations,  the  wide  remote  prospects 
seen  from  the  hills  of  life,  the  deep  ambitions, 
the  exaltations  of  spirit,  the  raptures  of  art. 
I  do  not  mean  that  one  can  share  these  in  their 


Keats  365 

fulness;  but  Keats  seems  to  have  experienced 
daily  and  hourly,  in  his  best  days,  those  august 
shocks  of  experience  and  insight  of  which  any 
man  who  loves  and  worships  art,  however  fit- 
fully, can  register  a  few.  There  is  a  little 
picture  of  Keats,  done,  I  think,  after  his  death 
by  Severn,  which  represents  him  sitting  in 
the  tiny  parlour  of  Wentworth  Place,  with  the 
window  open  to  the  orchard,  where,  under  the 
plum-tree,  he  wrote  the  Ode  to  the  Nightingale. 
He  sits  on  one  chair,  with  his  arm  on  the  back 
of  another,  his  hand  upon  his  hair,  reading  a 
volume  of  Shakespeare  with  a  smile  of  satis- 
faction. He  is  neatly  dressed,  and  has  pumps 
with  bows  on  his  feet.  That  picture,  like  the 
letters,  seems  to  bring  Keats  curiously  near 
to  life;  I  always  fancy  that  Severn  must  have 
had  in  his  mind  a  charming  passage  in  one  of 
Keats's  letters  to  his  sister  Fanny,  where  he 
says  he  would  like  to  have  a  house  with  a  big 
bow- window  with  some  stained  glass  in  it, 
looking  out  on  the  Lake  of  Geneva,  with  a 
bowl  of  gold-fish  by  his  side,  where  he  would  sit 
and  read  all  day,  like  a  portrait  of  a  gentle- 
man reading.  The  picture  is  somehow  so 
characteristic  that  one  feels  for  a  moment  in 
his  presence. 

Well,  what  do  I  deduce  from  all  this?  Partly 
that  Keats  was  a  man  of  incomparable  genius; 
partly  that  he  was  a  man  whom  one  could  have 


366  The  Silent  Isle 

loved  for  himself;  partly,  too,  that  one  ought  not 
to  be  ashamed  of  one's  far-reaching  thoughts, 
if  one  is  fortunate  enough  to  have  them,  and  that 
one  receives  and  gives  more  good  by  telling 
them  frankly  and  unsuspiciously  than  if  one 
keeps  them  to  oneself  for  fear  of  being  thought 
a  fool. 

Of  course  the  whole  career  of  Keats  opens  a 
door  to  a  host  of  uneasy  speculations.  If  the 
purpose  of  our  Creator  is  to  educate  the  world 
on  certain  lines,  if  he  desires  by  the  memory 
and  the  utterance  of  men  of  high  genius  to 
kindle  the  human  spirit  to  fine  and  generous 
dreams  and  to  the  appreciation  of  beauty,  it 
is  terribly  hard  to  discern  why  he  should  have 
created  a  spirit  so  fiery-sweet  as  that  of  Keats, 
and  then  cut  short  his  career  by  a  series  of  hard 
strokes  of  misfortune  and  disease  just  when  he 
was  finding  fullest  utterance.  One  looks  round 
upon  the  world,  and  one  sees  temperaments  of 
all  kinds — religious,  artistic,  philosophical  tem- 
peraments on  the  one  hand;  commercial,  com- 
monplace, animal,  selfish  temperaments  on 
the  other.  The  percentage  of  the  higher  spirits 
is  few  and  does  not  seem  to  increase;  yet  the 
human  race  owes  much  of  its  advance  in  purity, 
nobility,  and  kindliness  to  them.  We  cannot 
be  wholly  mistaken  in  thinking  that  it  is  these 
rare  spirits  which  sustain,  enliven,  and  enrich 
the  world.      And  yet  they  seem  to  be  regarded 


Keats  367 

with  no  special  favour  by  the  Creator;  they  have 
to  contend  with  insuperable  obstacles ;  the  very 
sensitiveness  of  their  spirit  is  a  torturing  dis- 
ability. The  selfish,  worldly,  hard,  brutal  tem- 
peraments have  almost  invariably  a  far  better 
time  of  it  in  the  world;  yet  both  the  exalted 
spirit  and  the  brutal  spirit  are  undeniable  facts; 
the  lofty,  unselfish,  pure  spirit  is  as  real  and  ex- 
istent as  the  vile  and  sensual  spirit.  Are  we 
all  under  a  lamentable  mistake  in  the  matter? 
Is  the  heart  of  God  more  on  the  side  of  what  is 
noble  and  pure  and  enthusiastic  than  it  is  on 
the  side  of  what  is  base  and  vile ;  or  is  it  only  the 
enthusiasts  who  think  so?  If  an  enlightened 
nation  is  engaged  in  a  war  with  a  brutal  nation, 
do  not  the  patriots  on  both  sides  pray  with  equal 
fervour  and  hope  to  God  to  protect  what  they 
call  the  right?  Do  not  both  sides  hope  and 
believe  that  he  will  support  them  and  confound 
their  opponents? 

These  are  dark  mysteries  of  thought;  but  if 
we  argue  in  the  cold  light  of  reason  we  dare  not, 
it  seems,  think  that  God  has  any  favourites  in 
the  battle.  He  silences  the  poet,  he  smites 
the  preacher  down;  while  he  sustains  in  wealth 
and  comfort  and  honour  the  man  of  low  and 
selfish  ambitions.  The  Psalmist  said  that  he 
saw  the  wicked  flourishing  like  a  green  bay- 
tree,  and  he  was  pleased  to  observe  a  little  after 
that  he  was  gone  and  that  his  place  was  no  more 


368  The  Silent  Isle 

to  be  found.  If  he  had  looked  a  little  closer  he 
might  have  seen  the  virtuous  man  oppressed, 
and  presently  removed  as  indifferently  as  the 
wicked.  One  cannot  feel  the  justice  or  the 
mercy  in  the  case  of  Keats.  He  was  made  to  give 
utterance  to  a  certain  pure  and  delicate  music 
of  the  mind  which  has  refreshed  and  inspired 
many  a  yearning  spirit;  but  he  was  swept  away 
ruthlessly  at  the  very  height  of  his  genius,  and 
it  is  still  more  bewildering  to  reflect  that  his  life 
was  probably  sacrificed  to  his  devoted  tendance 
on  his  consumptive  brother. 

Perhaps  these  are  but  fruitless  reveries!  but 
it  is  hard  to  resist  them.  The  only  course  is 
to  hold  fast  to  one's  faith  in  what  is  pure  and 
beautiful,  and  to  give  thanks  that  such  spirits 
as  the  spirit  of  Keats  are  allowed  to  pass  in  flame 
across  the  dark  heaven,  calling  from  horizon 
to  horizon  among  the  interstellar  spaces;  and 
to  be  sure  that  the  glow,  the  ardour,  the  aspira- 
tions that  they  impart  to  the  soul  are  real  and 
true — an  essential  part  of  the  mind  of  God> 
however  small  a  part  they  may  be  of  that  Eternal 
and  all-embracing  Will. 


I  saw  this  morning  in  the  paper,  half  with 
amusement  and  half  with  shame,  a  letter 
signed  by  a  long  list  of  the  sort  of  people  whom 
a  schoolboy  would  designate  as  "buffers,"  in- 
viting the  public  to  come  forward  and  subscribe 
for  the  purchase  of  the  house  where  Keats  died 
at  Rome,  in  order  to  make  it  a  sort  of  Museum, 
sacred  to  him  and  Shelley.  I  was  amused,  be- 
cause of  the  strange  ineptitude  and  clumsiness 
of  the  proposal.  In  the  first  place,  to  make  a 
shrine  of  pilgrimage  for  two  of  our  great  English 
poets  in  Rome,  of  all  places — that  is  fantastic 
enough;  but  to  select  the  house  which  Keats 
entered  a  dying  man,  and  where  he  spent  about 
four  months  in  horrible  torture  of  both  mind 
and  body,  from  which  he  wrote  to  his  friend 
Brown,  "I  have  an  habitual  feeling  of  my 
real  life  having  passed,  and  that  I  am  leading 
a  posthumous  existence," — could  anything  be 
more  inappropriate?  It  is  not  too  much,  in 
fact,  to  say  that  the  house  selected  to  enshrine 
his  memory  is  the  house  where  he  was  less 
himself  than  at  any  other  period  of  his  short 
24  369 


37°  The  Silent  Isle 

life.  If  the  house  in  Wentworth  Place,  Hamp- 
stead,  which  I  believe  has  been  lately  identified 
with  absolute  certainty,  could  have  been  pur- 
chased,— the  house  where,  on  the  verge  of  dis- 
aster and  doom,  Keats  spent  a  brief  ecstatic 
interval  of  life, — there  would  have  been  some 
meaning  in  that;  but  one  might  almost  as  well 
purchase  the  inn  at  Dumfries  where  Keats 
once  spent  a  few  nights  as  the  house  at  Rome; 
in  fact,  if  the  Dumfries  inn  had  been  purchased, 
it  mighi  have  been  made  a  Keats-Burns  museum 
if  the  idea  was  to  kill  two  birds  with  one  stone 
— for  to  associate  Shelley  with  Keats  in  the 
house  at  Rome  is  another  piece  of  well-mean- 
ing stupidity.  Their  acquaintance  was  really 
of  the  slightest,  though  Shelley  was  extra- 
ordinarily kind  and  generous  to  Keats,  offering 
to  receive  him  into  his  own  house  as  an  invalid, 
and  of  course  regarding  him  with  the  deepest 
admiration,  as  the  Adonais  testifies.  But  Keats 
never  took  very  much  to  Shelley,  and  was  always 
a  little  suspicious  that  he  was  being  patronised; 
and  consequently  he  never  opened  his  heart 
and  mind  to  Shelley  as  he  did  to  some  of  his 
friends.  Indeed,  Shelley  knew  very  little  of 
Keats,  and  supposed  him  to  be  a  very  differ- 
ent character  to  what  he  really  was.  Shelley 
supposed  that  Keats  had  had  both  his  happi- 
ness and  his  health  undermined  by  severe  critic- 
ism;  as   a  matter   of  fact  Keats  had  been,  for 


Sepulchres  of  Prophets        371 

a  young  and  unknown  poet,  respectfully  enough 
criticised — and  his  letters  show  how  extremely 
indifferent  he  was  to  external  criticism  of  any 
kind.  Keats  said — and  there  is  no  reason  to 
doubt  the  truth  of  the  words,  because  they 
are  borne  out  by  many  similar  sayings  in  his 
most  candid  and  most  intimate  letters — that 
his  own  perception  of  his  poetical  deficiencies 
had  given  him  far  more  pain  than  the  strictures 
of  any  critic  could  possibly  do.  The  fact  that 
the  two  poets  both  happened  to  die  in  Italy  is 
no  reason  for  selecting  Italy  as  the  place  in 
which  to  give  them  a  permanent  joint  memorial. 
But  one  can  excuse  the  inappropriateness 
and  the  tactlessness  of  commemorating  the  two 
poets  together  in  Italy,  because  it  is  so  well- 
meant  and  sincere  an  attempt  to  do  them 
honour.  What  one  finds  it  harder  to  do  is  to 
pardon  the  solemnity,  the  snobbishness,  of  the 
whole  proceeding.  The  names  of  those  eminent 
people  who  have  signed  the  letter  include  a 
certain  number  of  eminent  men  of  letters, 
but  they  include  also  the  names  of  people  like 
the  Headmaster  of  Eton,  presumably  because 
Shelley  was  at  Eton.  When  one  remembers  how 
Shelley  was  treated  at  Eton,  and  the  sentiments 
which  he  entertained  about  the  place,  one  can- 
not help  recalling  the  verse  about  the  men  who 
built  the  sepulchres  of  the  prophets  whom  their 
forefathers  had  stoned.     An  almost  incredible 


372  The  Silent  Isle 

instance  of  this  occurred  at  Oxford.  Shelley, 
as  is  well  known,  was  at  University  College. 
He  lived  his  own  life  there,  tried  his  chemical 
experiments,  took  long  walks  in  the  neighbour- 
hood, in  the  company  of  Hogg,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  practising  pistol-shooting  or  sailing 
paper  boats.  No  one  took  the  slightest  trouble 
to  befriend  or  advise  him,  though  he  was  one 
who  responded  eagerly  to  affectionate  interest. 
When  he  published  his  atheistical  pamphlet, 
which  was  the  whim  of  a  clever,  fantastic, 
and  isolated  young  man,  the  authorities  ex- 
pelled him  with  scorn  and  fury;  and  now  that 
he  has  become  a  great  national  poet,  they  have 
commemorated  him  there  by  setting  up  a  very 
beautiful  figure  of  a  drowned  youth  in  a  state 
of  nudity,  though  Shelley's  body  was  naturally 
found  clothed  when  it  was  recovered  on  the 
sea-beach — indeed  it  is  recorded  that  he  had  a 
volume  of  Keats  and  a  Sophocles  in  his  pocket. 
This  figure  is  placed  in  a  singular  shrine,  lighted 
by  a  dome,  that  somehow  contrives  to  suggest 
a  mixture  between  a  swimming-bath  and  the 
smoking-room  of  a  hotel.  Well,  it  may  be  said 
that  the  least  we  can  do  is  to  give  posthumous 
honour  to  those  whom  we  bullied  and  derided  in 
their  lifetime.  A  memorial  placed  in  a  seat 
of  learning  and  education  is  a  sort  of  stimulus 
to  the  young  men  who  are  trained  there  to  go 
and  do  likewise;  but  do  the  worthy  men  who 


The  World  and  the  Poet     373 

placed  this  memorial  at  Oxford  really  wish 
their  students  to  emulate  the  example  of  Shel- 
ley? If  a  sensitive  young  man  of  wild  ideas 
went  up  to  Oxford  now,  how  would  he  be  treated? 
Probably  nowadays  some  virtuous  and  enthu- 
siastic young  tutor  would  feel  a  certain  sense  of 
responsibility  for  the  young  man.  He  would 
endeavour  to  influence  him;  he  would  implore 
him  to  play  games,  to  go  to  lectures,  to  attend 
early  chapel.  He  would  do  his  best  to  check 
any  symptom  of  originality  or  free  thought. 
He  would  try  to  make  him  dutiful  and  or- 
thodox, and  to  discourage  all  his  fantastic 
theories. 

Which  of  these  eminently  respectable  gentle- 
men who  have  brought  before  the  public  the 
necessity  of  commemorating  two  great  poets 
are  on  the  lookout  for  talent  of  the  kind  that 
Keats  and  Shelley  exhibited?  How  many  of 
them,  if  they  came  across  a  latter-day  young 
poet,  indolent,  unconventional,  crude,  fantastic, 
would  encourage  him  to  be  true  to  his  ideas  and 
to  work  out  his  own  salvation  on  his  own  lines? 
Which  of  them,  if  they  had  been  confronted  with 
our  two  poets  in  the  flesh,  would  have  encouraged 
Keats  to  be  Keats  and  Shelley  to  be  Shelley? 
Would  they  not  rather  have  done  their  best  to 
inculcate  into  them  their  own  tamer  concep- 
tions of  culture  and  righteousness? 

Of  course  there  is  something  impressive  in 


374  The  Silent  Isle 

the  posthumous  fame  of  these  two  men  of 
genius  collecting  in  their  wake  a  crowd  of  ador- 
ing respectabilities,  like  the  people  in  the  Ger- 
man story  who  touch  the  magic  spear  carried 
by  the  young  hero,  and  are  unable  to  withdraw 
their  hands,  but  trot  grotesquely  behind  their 
conqueror  through  street  and  market-place. 
The  melancholy  part  of  the  situation  is  that  one 
feels  that  these  excellent  people,  for  all  their 
admirption,  have  not  learnt  the  real  lesson  of 
the  incident  in  the  least.  They  would  be  pre- 
pared to  browbeat  and  contemn  originality 
just  as  vigorously  as  their  predecessors.  They 
would  speak  of  a  modern  Keats  as  a  self- 
indulgent  dilettante;  of  a  modern  Shelley  as  an 
immoral  Republican.  The  fact  that  the  two 
have  stepped  silently  into  Parnassus,  receiving 
nothing  but  contempt  and  neglect  from  those 
whose  duty  it  was  to  encourage  them,  does  not 
seem  to  enlighten  the  minds  of  those  who  are 
ready  enough  to  applaud  as  soon  as  they  find 
the  world  applauding.  Of  course  teachers 
are  in  a  difficult  position.  There  are  always  at 
school  and  college  a  certain  number  of  wild, 
fantastic,  crude  young  men,  who  indulge  in 
unconventional  speculations,  who  have  not  the 
genius  of  Keats  and  Shelley  in  the  background, 
but  who  share  their  distaste  and  disgust  for 
the  conventionality,  the  tameness,  the  vulgarity 
of  the  world.     It  is  the  duty,  no  doubt,  of  peo- 


The  World  and  the  Poet      375 

pie  who  are  responsible  for  the  education  of 
these  young  men  to  try  and  turn  them  into 
respectable  citizens.  Sometimes  the  process  is 
successful;  sometimes  it  is  not.  Often  enough 
these  visionary,  perverse  people  are  misunder- 
stood and  shunted  till  they  make  shipwreck  of 
their  lives.  The  path  of  originality  is  even 
harder  than  the  path  of  the  transgressor,  be- 
cause the  stakes  for  which  the  man  of  genius 
plays  are  so  tremendous.  It  is  the  applause  of 
a  nation,  the  approbation  of  connoisseurs,  the 
heart-felt  gratitude  of  idealists  if  you  win; 
and  if  you  fail,  a  contemptuous  pity  for  gifts 
wasted  and  misapplied.  But  one  of  the  reasons 
why  we  are  so  unintellectual,  so  conventional, 
so  commonplace  a  nation  is  because  we  do  not 
care  for  ideas,  we  do  not  admire  originality, 
we  do  not  want  to  be  made  to  think  and  feel; 
what  we  admire  is  success  and  respectability; 
and  if  a  poet  can  so  far  force  himself  upon  the 
attention  of  timid  idealists,  who  worship  beauty 
in  secret,  as  to  sell  large  editions  of  his  works 
and  make  a  good  income,  then  we  reward  him 
in  our  clumsy  way  with  glory  and  worship.  It 
is  horrible  to  reflect  that  if  Shelley  had  succeeded 
to  his  father's  baronetcy  he  would  probably 
have  had  at  once  an  increased  circulation.  If 
Keats  had  been  a  peer  like  Byron,  he  would 
have  been  loaded  with  vapid  commendation. 
We  still  cling  pathetically  in  our  seats  of  edu- 


376  The  Silent  Isle 

cation  to  the  study  of  Greek,  but  whenever  the 
Greek'  spirit  appears,  that  insatiable  appetite 
for  impressions  of  beauty,  that  intense  desire 
for  mental  activity,  we  think  it  rather  shocking 
and  disreputable.  We  are  at  heart  commer- 
cial Puritans  all  the  time;  we  loathe  experi- 
ments and  originality  and  independence;  we 
think  that  God  rewards  respectability,  be- 
cause we  believe  that  material  rewards — wealth, 
comfort,  position — are  the  only  things  worth 
having.  We  call  ourselves  Christians,  and  we 
crucify  the  Christ-like  spirit  of  simplicity  and 
liberty.  But  let  us  at  least  make  up  our  minds 
as  to  what  we  desire,  and  not  try  to  arrive  at  a 
disgusting  compromise.  Our  way  is  to  per- 
secute genius  living  and  to  crown  it  dead.  Can 
we  not  make  a  sincere  attempt  to  recognise  it 
when  it  is  among  us,  to  look  out  for  it,  to  en- 
courage it,  instead  of  acting  in  the  spirit  of 
Pickwickian  caution,  and  when  there  are  two 
mobs,  to  shout  with  the  largest? 


LI 


I  have  been  reading  the  Memoir  of  J.  H.  Short- 
house,  and  it  has  been  a  great  mystery  to  me. 
It  is  an  essentially  commonplace  kind  of  life 
that  is  there  revealed.  He  was  a  well-to-do 
manufacturer — of  vitriol,  too,  of  all  the  incon- 
gruous things.  He  belonged  to  a  cultivated 
suburban  circle,  that  soil  where  the  dullest 
literary  flowers  grow  and  flourish.  He  lived 
in  a  villa  with  small  grounds;  he  went  off  to  his 
business  in  the  morning,  and  returned  in  the 
afternoon  to  a  high  tea.  In  the  evening  he 
wrote  and  read  aloud.  The  only  thing  that 
made  him  different  from  other  men  was  that  he 
had  the  fear  of  epileptic  attacks  for  ever  hang- 
ing over  him;  and  further,  he  was  unfitted  for 
society  owing  to  a  very  painful  and  violent 
stammer.  I  saw  him  twice  in  my  life;  remote 
impressions  of  people  seen  for  a  single  evening 
are  often  highly  inaccurate,  but  I  will  give  them 
for  what  they  are  worth.  On  the  first  occasion 
I  saw  a  small,  sturdily  built  man,  with  a  big, 
clerical  sort  of  face  with  marked  features,  and, 
as  far  as  I  can  recollect,  rather  coppery  in  hue. 

377 


378  The  Silent  Isle 

There  was  a  certain  grotesqueness  communi- 
cated to  the  face  by  large,  thin,  fly-away  whisk- 
ers of  the  kind  that  used  to  be  known  as 
"weepers"  or  "Dundrearies."  He  had  then 
just  dawned  upon  the  world  as  a  celebrity.  I 
had  myself  as  an  undergraduate  read  and  re- 
read and  revelled  in  John  Inglesant,  and  I 
was  intensely  curious  to  see  him  and  worship 
him.  But  he  was  not  a  very  worshipful  man. 
He  gave  the  impression  of  great  courtesy  and 
simplicity;  but  his  stammer  was  an  obstacle 
to  any  sense  of  ease  in  his  presence.  I  seem 
to  recollect  that  instead  of  being  brought  up, 
as  most  stammerers  are,  by  a  consonant,  it 
took  the  form  with  Shorthouse  of  repeating  the 
word  "Too — too"  over  and  over  again  until 
the  barrier  was  surmounted;  and  in  order  to 
help  himself  out,  he  pulled  at  his  whiskers 
alternately,  with  a  motion  as  though  he  were 
milking  a  cow.  Some  years  after  I  saw  him 
again;  he  was  then  paler  and  more  worn 
of  aspect.  He  had  discarded  his  whiskers, 
and  had  grown  a  pointed  beard.  He  was  a 
distinguished-looking  man  now,  whereas  for- 
merly he  had  only  been  an  impressive- 
looking  one.  I  do  not  remember  that  his 
stammer  was  nearly  so  apparent,  and  he  had 
far  more  assurance  and  dignity,  which  had 
come,  I  suppose,  from  his  having  been  wel- 
comed and  sought  after  by  all  kinds  of  eminent 


Shorthouse  379 

people,  and  from  having  found  that  eminent 
people  were  very  much  like  any  other  people, 
except  that  they  were  more  simple  and  more  in- 
teresting. I  was  still  conscious  of  his  great 
kindness  and  courtesy,  a  courtesy  distributed 
with  perfect  impartiality. 

But  the  mystery  about  him  is  this.  The 
Life  reveals,  or  seems  to  reveal,  a  very  common- 
place man,  cultivated,  religious,  "decent  not 
to  fail  in  offices  of  tenderness"  like  Telemachus, 
but  for  all  that  essentially  parochial.  His  let- 
ters are  heavy,  uninteresting,  banal,  and  reveal 
little  except  a  very  shaky  taste  in  literature.  The 
Essays  which  are  reproduced,  which  he  wrote 
for  Birmingham  literary  societies,  are  of  the  same 
quality,  serious,  ordinary,  prosaic,  mildly  ethical. 

Yet  behind  all  this,  this  pious,  conscientious 
man  of  business  contrived  to  develop  a  style  of 
quite  extraordinary  fineness,  lucid,  beauty- 
haunted,  delicate  and  profound.  John  Ingle- 
sant  is  not  a  wholly  artistic  book,  because  it 
is  ill-proportioned  and  the  structure  is  weak — 
the  middle  is  not  in  the  centre,  and  it  leaves 
off,  not  because  the  writer  appears  to  have  come 
to  the  end,  but  because  it  could  not  well  be 
longer.  There  is  no  balance  of  episodes.  It 
has  just  the  sort  of  faults  that  a  book  might  be 
expected  to  have  which  was  written  at  long  in- 
tervals and  not  on  any  very  carefully  conceived 
plan.     It  looks  as  if  Shorthouse  had  just  taken 


380  The  Silent  Isle 

a  pen  and  a  piece  of  paper  and  had  begun 
to  write.  Yet  the  phrasing,  the  cadence,  the 
melody  of  the  book  are  exquisite.  I  do  not 
think  he  ever  reached  the  same  level  again, 
though  his  other  books  are  full  of  beautiful 
passages,  except  perhaps  in  the  little  introduc- 
tion to  an  edition  of  George  Herbert,  which  is  a 
wonderfully  attractive  piece  of  writing. 

Shorthouse  had  an  extraordinary  gift  for 
evoking  a  certain  sort  of  ecclesiastical  scene,  a 
chapel  buried  in  spring- woods,  seen  in  the  clear 
and  fresh  light  of  the  early  morning,  the  fra- 
grant air,  with  perhaps  a  hint  of  dewy  chilli- 
ness about  it,  stealing  in  and  swaying  the 
flames  of  the  lighted  tapers,  made  ghost-like 
and  dusky  by  the  touch  of  dawn;  the  priest, 
solemnly  vested,  moves  about  with  a  quiet 
deliberateness,  and  the  words  of  the  Eucharist 
seem  to  fall  on  the  ear  with  a  soft  and  delicate 
precision,  as  from  the  lips  of  one  who  is  dis- 
charging a  task  of  almost  overwhelming  sweet- 
ness, to  which  he  consecrates  the  early  purity  of 
the  awakening  day. 

Such  was  Shorthouse's  best  and  most  romantic 
hour.  He  had  a  deep-seated  love  of  ritual,  in 
spite  of  his  inherited  quietism — but  for  all  that 
he  was  a  very  liberal  Churchman,  of  the  school 
of  Kingsley  rather  than  of  the  school  of  Pusey. 
Ritual  was  to  him  a  beautiful  adjunct;  not  a 
symbolical  preoccupation. 


Shorthouse  381 

The  mystery  is  why  this  very  delicate  and 
unique  flower  of  art  should  have  sprung  up  on 
this  particular  soil.  The  most  that  one  hopes 
for,  in  the  way  of  literary  interest,  from  such 
surroundings,  is  a  muddled  optimism,  rather 
timidly  expressed,  based  on  the  writings  of 
Robert  Browning  and  Carlyle.  Instead  of  this, 
one  gets  this  precieux  antique  style,  based  upon 
the  Bible  and  John  Bunyan,  and  enriched  by  a 
transparent  power  of  tinging  modern  English 
with  an  ancient  and  secluded  flavour. 

It  shows  how  very  little  surroundings  and  in- 
fluences have  to  do  with  the  growth  of  an  artistic 
instinct,  because  in  the  case  of  Shorthouse  it 
seems  to  have  been  a  purely  spontaneous  pro- 
duct. He  followed  no  one ;  he  had  the  advantage 
of  no  trained  criticism ;  because  it  seems  that  his 
only  critic  was  his  wife,  and  though  Mrs.  Short- 
house  appears  in  these  pages  as  a  very  courage- 
ous, loyal,  and  devoted  woman,  it  is  clear  from 
the  record  that  she  had  no  special  literary  gift. 

The  rarity  of  the  thing  is  part  of  its  wonder. 
It  is  possible  to  tell  upon  the  fingers  of  one  hand, 
or  at  all  events  on  the  fingers  of  two  hands,  the 
names  of  all  the  nineteenth-century  writers,  who 
have  handled  prose  with  any  marked  delicacy. 
There  are  several  effective  prose-writers  but 
very  few  artists.  Prose  has  been  employed  in 
England  till  of  late  merely  as  a  straight  for- 
ward   method     of     enforcing     and     expressing 


382  The  Silent  Isle 

ideas,  in  a  purely  scientific  manner.  Literary 
craftsmen  have  turned  rather  to  verse,  and  here 
the  wonder  grows,  because  one  or  two  speci- 
mens of  Shorthouse's  verse  are  given,  which 
reveal  an  absolute  incapacity  for  the  process, 
without  apparently  the  smallest  instinct  for 
rhyme,  metre,  or  melody, — the  very  lowest  sort 
of  slipshod  amateur  poetry. 

After  Shorthouse  had  once  tasted  the  delights 
of  publication  and  the  pleasures  of  fame  he 
wrote  too  much,  and  fiddled  rather  tediously 
upon  a  single  string.  Moreover,  he  attempted 
humorous  effects,  not  very  successfully;  be- 
cause one  of  the  interesting  points  about  John 
Inglesant  is  that  there  is  hardly  the  slightest 
touch  of  humour  from  beginning  to  end,  except 
perhaps  in  the  fantastic  mixture  of  tragedy 
and  comedy  in  the  carnival  scene,  presided 
over  by  the  man  who  masquerades  as  a  corpse; 
and  even  here  the  humour  is  almost  entirely 
of  a  macabre  type. 

Of  course  one  would  not  assign  to  Short- 
house  a  very  high  place  in  English  literature, 
beautiful  as  his  best  work  is.  But  a  writer  may 
have  an  interest  which  is  out  of  proportion  to 
the  value  of  his  writings.  The  interest  of  Short- 
house  is  the  interest  which  attaches  to  the  bloom- 
ing of  a  curious  and  exotic  flower  in  a  place 
where  its  presence  is  absolutely  unaccountable; 
he  probably  will  not  maintain  his  hold  upon  the 


Shorthouse  383 

minds  of  a  later  generation,  because  there  is  no 
coherent  system  of  thought  in  his  book.  In- 
glesant  is  a  mere  courtly  mirror,  the  prey  of  his 
moods  and  his  surroundings,  in  which  beautiful 
tones  of  religious  feeling  are  engagingly  reflected. 
But  to  all  who  study  the  development  of  Eng- 
lish prose,  Shorthouse  will  have  a  definite  value, 
as  a  spontaneous  and  lonely  out-crop  of  poetical 
prose- writing  in  an  alien  soil ;  an  isolated  worker 
foreshowing  in  his  secluded  and  graceful  talent 
the  rise  of  a  new  school  in  English  literature, 
the  appearance  of  a  plant  which  may  be  ex- 
pected in  the  future,  if  not  in  the  immediate 
future,  to  break  into  leaf  and  bloom,  into 
colour  and  fragrance. 


LII 


I  found  myself  the  other  day  in  the  neighbour- 
hood of  Wells.  I  had  hitherto  rather  deliber- 
ately avoided  going  there,  because  so  many 
people  whose  taste  and  judgment  are  wholly 
unreliable  have  told  me  that  I  ought  to  see  it. 
The  instinct  to  disagree  with  the  majority 
is  a  noble  one,  and  has  perhaps  effected  more 
for  humanity  than  any  other  instinct;  but  it 
must  be  cautiously  indulged  in. 

In  this  case  I  resisted  the  instinct  to  abstain 
from  visiting  Wells;  and  I  was  glad  that  I  did 
so,  because,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  most  peo- 
ple consider  Wells  to  be  a  very  beautiful  place, 
it  is  undoubtedly  true  that  it  is  most  beautiful. 
Wells  and  Oxford  on  a  large  scale,  Burford  and 
Chipping  Campden  on  a  small  scale,  are  in 
my  experience  the  four  most  beautiful  places 
in  England,  as  far  as  buildings  go.  There  are 
other  places  which  are  full  of  beautiful  buildings ; 
but  there  is  a  harmony  about  these  four  places 
which  is  a  very  rare  and  delightful  quality. 

Wells,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  is  almost  impos- 
sibly   beautiful,    and    incredibly    romantic.     It 

384 


Wells  385 

is  an  almost  perfectly  mediaeval  place,  with 
the  enormous  advantage  that  it  is  also  old,  a 
quality  which  we  are  apt  to  forget  that  mediseval 
places,  when  first  built,  did  not  possess.  I  do 
not  think  that  Wells,  when  first  built,  was  pro- 
bably more  than  just  a  beautiful  place.  But 
it  has  now  all  grown  old  together,  undisturbed, 
unvisited.  It  has  crumbled  and  weathered  and 
mellowed  into  one  of  the  most  enchanting 
places  in  the  world. 

God  forbid  that  I  should  attempt  to  describe 
it ;  and  indeed  I  am  not  sure  that  the  things  that 
are  most  admired  about  it  are  the  most  admir- 
able. The  west  front  of  the  Cathedral,  for 
instance,  has  been  temporarily  ruined  by  the 
restoration  of  the  little  marble  shafts,  which 
now  merely  look  like  a  quantity  of  india-rubber 
tubing,  let  in  in  pieces.  The  choir  of  the  Cathe- 
dral, again,  is  an  outrage.  The  low  stone  stalls, 
like  a  row  of  arbours  designed  by  a  child,  the 
mean  organ,  the  comfortable  seats,  have  a 
shockingly  Erastian  air;  there  is  not  a  touch  of 
charm  or  mystery  about  it;  I  cannot  imagine 
going  there  to  pray.  The  Vicars'  Close,  which 
is  foolishly  extolled,  had  been  made  by  restora- 
tion to  look  like  a  street  in  a  small  watering- 
place. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  Bishop's  Palace, 
with  its  moat  full  of  swans,  its  fantastic  oriels 
and  turrets,  its  bastions  and  towers,  wreathed 

25 


386  The  Silent  Isle 

with  ivy  and  creepers,  is  a  thing  which  fills  the 
mind  with  a  sort  of  hopeless  longing  to  possess 
the  secret  of  its  beauty;  one  desires  in  a  dumb 
and  bewildered  way  to  surrender  oneself,  with 
a  yearning  confidence,  to  whatever  the  power 
may  be  which  can  design  and  produce  a  thing 
of  such  unutterable  loveliness. 

By  the  favour  of  an  ecclesiastical  friend  I  was 
allowed  to  wander  alone  in  a  totally  unaccount- 
able paradise  of  gardens  that  lies  to  the  east  of 
the  Cathedral.  It  was  impossible  to  conceive 
whom  it  belonged  to,  or  what  connection  it  had 
with  the  houses  round  about.  It  was  all  in- 
tersected with  pools  and  rivulets  of  clear  water. 
Here  was  a  space  of  cultivated  ground  with 
homely  vegetables.  Here  stood  a  mysterious 
ancient  building,  which  proved  on  examination 
to  contain  nothing  but  a  gushing  well  of  water. 
Here  was  a  lawn  with  a  trim  gravel  walk  bor- 
dered with  roses ;  while  a  few  paces  away  was  a 
deserted  thicket  of  sprawling  shrubs,  elders,  and 
laurels,  with  a  bit  of  wild  rough  meadow  in  the 
heart  of  the  copse;  and  here  was  a  sight  that 
nearly  brought  me  to  my  knees.  Beside  an 
ancient  wall,  with  the  towers  and  gables  of  the 
Cathedral  looking  solemnly  over,  a  great  spring 
broke  up  out  of  the  ground  from  some  secret 
channel  into  a  little  pool  surrounded  by  rich 
water  plants,  and  flowed  away  in  a  full  channel ; 
not  one,  but  three  of  these  astonishing  foun- 


Wells  387 

tains  were  to  be  seen  in  this  little  space  of  grass 
and  copse. 

These  are  the  Wells  themselves,  the  Aqua 
Solis,  as  the  Romans  called  them,  fed  by  some 
hidden  channel  from  the  hills,  sent  gushing  up 
day  and  night  for  the  delight  and  refreshment  of 
men.  I  wish  that  the  mediaeval  builders  had 
built  the  great  church  over  instead  of  near  these 
wells,  and  had  let  them  burst  up  in  a  special 
chapel,  so  that  the  church  might  have  been 
musical  with  the  sound  of  streams;  and  so  that 
the  waters  might  have  flowed  from  the  door  of 
the  house,  as  Ezekial  saw  them  flow  eastward 
from  the  threshold  of  the  holy  habitation  to 
Engedi  and  Eneglaim  to  gladden  the  earth. 

Then  as  I  wandered  in  a  place  of  dark  leaves, 
beside  the  moat  under  the  frowning  towers,  I 
saw  a  kingfisher  sit  on  a  bough,  his  back  pow- 
dered with  sapphires,  his  red  breast,  his  wise 
head  on  one  side,  watching  the  stream.  In  a 
moment  he  plunged  and  disappeared;  in  an 
instant  he  was  back  again  on  his  perch,  flash- 
ing, like  Excalibur,  over  the  stream,  his  prey 
in  his  bill. 

For  a  long  morning  I  wandered  about,  diz- 
zied with  beauty,  gazing,  wondering,  desiring  I 
knew  not  what. 

Then  came  the  strange  thought  that  this  place 
of  dreamful  beauty  should  be  in  the  hands  of  a 
few  simple  ecclesiastical  persons;  the  town  is 


388  The  Silent  Isle 

little  more  than  a  village;  century  by  century 
it  has  lived  a  little,  quiet,  provincial  life.  It 
has  produced,  so  far  as  I  know,  no  great  man. 
This  soft  air,  this  humid  climate,  sheltered 
from  the  wind,  full  of  warm  sunlight,  fed  with 
dew,  seems  favourable  to  a  long,  comfortable, 
indolent  life.  The  beauty  of  the  place  seems 
to  have  had  no  particular  effect  upon  the  peo- 
ple who  live  there.  It  has  never  been  a  centre 
of  thought  or  activity.  It  ought,  one  would 
have  thought,  to  have  produced  a  certain  kind 
of  poetical  temper,  even  though  it  were  a  tem- 
per of  indolent  enjoyment  rather  than  of  crea- 
tive force.  But  not  even  a  beauty  born  of 
murmuring  sound — and  the  air  is  full  of  mur- 
murs— seemed  to  have  passed  into  the  faces  of 
the  simple  townsfolk  who  make  it  their  home. 
I  could  not  gather  that  the  exquisite  loveli- 
ness of  the  place  had  any  particular  effect 
upon  the  dwellers  there,  except  a  mild  pleasure 
in  the  fact  that  so  many  strangers  should  come 
to  see  the  place.  I  do  not  exactly  grudge 
strangers  the  sight  of  it,  though  I  should  like 
better  to  think  of  it  all  as  standing  in  an  en- 
chanted valley  hard  to  penetrate.  But  it  is 
difficult  to  see  exactly  for  whom  it  all  exists.  It 
seems  to  be  a  place  that  ought  to  have  a  dream- 
ful, appreciative,  emotional  life  of  its  own,  a 
place  where  a  few  worthy  natures  might  live 
in  a  serene,  joyful,  impassioned  mood;  a  place 


Wells  389 

where  there  is  nothing  that  need  remind  the 
dweller  of  ugliness  or  vulgarity,  of  progress  or 
statistics;  a  place  for  elect  souls  and  fine 
natures. 

One  does  not  want  to  be  fantastic  or  absurd 
in  such  reveries  as  these;  but  it  is  sad  to  think 
that  scattered  about  England  in  mean  towns, 
perhaps  in  sordid  houses,  are  natures  that  could 
live  in  a  place  like  Wells  with  a  perpetual  de- 
light, a  constant  drinking  at  the  sources  of 
beauty,  while  most  of  the  actual  inhabitants 
have  come  there  almost  by  chance,  and  do  not 
appear  to  be  particularly  conscious  of  their 
blessings  or  particularly  affected  by  their  sur- 
roundings. It  seems  indeed  a  curious  waste- 
fulness, that  the  Power  who  rules  the  world 
should  have  heaped  in  this  tiny  place  among 
the  hills  such  a  treasure  of  delicate  beauty, 
with  such  an  indifference  as  to  whether  it  should 
be  perceived  or  discerned  by  congenial  spirits. 

The  type  of  ecclesiastic  whom  I  would  like 
to  see  in  a  place  like  this  would  be  a  man  deeply 
sensitive  to  art  and  music,  with  a  strong  mysti- 
cal sense  of  wonder  and  desire;  visionary  per- 
haps, and  what  is  called  unpractical,  believing 
that  religion  was  not  so  much  a  matter 
of  conduct  as  a  matter  of  mood;  in  whom 
conduct  would  follow  mood,  as  a  rush  bends 
in  the  stream.  I  do  not  say  that  this  is  the 
most  vital  form  of  religion.     It  is  not  the  spirit 


39°  The  Silent  Isle 

of  Luther  or  of  John  Wesley;  it  lives  more 
among  hopes  than  certainties;  it  desires  to  see 
God  rather  than  to  proclaim  His  wrath.  Such  a 
man,  tenderly  courteous  to  all,  patient,  wise,  sad 
with  a  hopeful  sadness,  living  in  an  atmosphere 
of  uplifted  prayer,  hearing  the  ripple  of  the  spring 
or  the  bird's  song  among  the  thickets,  his  heart 
rising  in  ecstasy  upon  the  holy  music,  upborne 
by  the  grave  organ-thunders,  speaking  some- 
times out  of  a  full  heart  of  the  secrets  of  God, 
would  lead  a  life  that  would  be  shepherded  by 
his  Lord  in  a  green  pasture;  led  by  waters  of 
comfort  and  in  paths  of  righteousness,  with  a 
table  indeed  prepared.  Such  a  life  is  apt 
nowadays  to  be  viewed  contemptuously  by  the 
virile  man,  by  the  practical  philanthropist;  but 
it  is  such  a  spirit  as  this  that  produced  the 
Psalms,  the  Book  of  Job,  the  Apocalypse.  It 
is  a  type  of  religion  that  even  those  who  base 
their  faith  upon  the  open  Bible  are  apt  to  de- 
spise and  condemn;  if  so,  their  Bible  is  not  an 
open  one,  but  sealed  with  many  seals  of  igno- 
rance and  dulness.  Such  a  life  should  be  full  of 
energy,  of  faith,  of  purity.  It  should  speak  to 
those  that  had  ears  to  hear  in  secret  chambers, 
even  though  it  did  not  cry  from  the  house- 
tops. In  this  stupid  and  hypocritical  age,  that 
mistakes  money  for  wealth,  excitement  for 
pleasure,  interference  for  influence,  fame  for 
wisdom,  speed  for  progress,  volubility  for  elo- 


Wells  391 

quence,  such  a  life  is  despised,  if  not  actually 
condemned. 

Yet  such  lives  might  break  from  under- 
ground, in  a  place  of  greensward  and  bushes, 
among  the  voices  of  birds  and  the  mellow  mur- 
mur of  bells,  even  as  the  fountains  themselves 
spring  forth.  In  these  bustling  days  we  are 
apt  to  think  that  streams  have  no  work  but  to 
turn  mills  and  make  light  for  cities,  to  bear 
merchandise,  to  sweep  foulness  to  the  sea; 
we  forget  that  they  pass  through  woodland 
places,  feeding  the  grasses  and  the  trees,  quench- 
ing the  thirst  of  bird  and  beast,  that  they  sparkle 
in  the  sun,  gleam  wan  in  the  sunset,  reflecting 
the  pale  sky.  Oh,  perverse  and  forgetful  gene- 
ration, that  knows  better  than  God  what  the 
aim  and  goal  of  our  pilgrimage  is;  that  will 
not  hear  His  murmured  language,  or  see  His 
patient  writing  on  the  wall!  That  in  teach- 
ing, forgets  to  learn,  and  in  prophesying,  has 
no  leisure  to  look  backwards!  It  is  we  that 
have  despised  life  and  beauty  and  God;  it  is  we 
that  make  graven  images,  and  worship  the  fire 
till  we  cannot  see  the  sun,  who  pray  daily  for 
peace,  and  cast  the  jewel  in  the  mire  when  it 
is  put  in  our  foolish  hands. 

And  after  all,  though  we  shelter  our  lives  and 
seclude  them  as  we  may,  we  have  all  of  us  a 
heavy  burden  to  bear.  These  mouldering 
walls,  these  soaring  towers,  the  voice  of  many 


392  The  Silent  Isle 

waters,  teach  me  this,  if  they  teach  me  nothing 
else,  that  peace  and  beauty  are  dear  to  the 
heart  of  God;  that  he  sets  them  where  he  can; 
that  we  can  perceive  them  and  love  them; 
and  that  if  our  life  is  a  learning  of  some  great 
and  dim  lesson,  these  sweet  influences  may 
sustain  and  comfort  us  at  least  as  well  as  the 
phantoms  which  so  many  of  us  pursue. 


LIII 

I  am  sure  that  it  is  an  inspiring  as  well  as  a 
pleasant  thing  to  go  on  pilgrimage  sometimes  to 
the  houses  where  interesting  people  and  great 
people  have  lived  and  thought  and  written. 
It  helps  one  to  realise  that  "they  were  mortal, 
too,  like  us,"  but  it  makes  one  realise  it  grate- 
fully and  joyfully;  it  is  good  to  feel,  as  one  comes 
to  do  by  such  visits,  that  such  thoughts,  such 
words,  are  not  unattainable  by  humanity,  that 

'  they  can  be  thought  in  rooms  and  fields  and 
gardens   like   our   own,    and   written   down   in 

1  chairs  and  on  tables  much  the  same  as  others. 
Tennyson  went  once  to  see  Goethe's  house  at 
Weimar,  and  was  more  transported  by  seeing  a 
room  full  of  his  old  boots  and  medicine-bottles 
than  by  anything  else  that  he  saw;  and  it  is  a 
wise  care  that  keeps  dear  Sir  Walter's  old  hat 
and  coat  and  clumsy  laced  shoes  in  a  glass 
case  at  Abbotsford.  Of  course  one  must  not 
go  in  search  of  old  boots  and  bottles,  as  many 
tourists  do,  without  caring  much  about  the  hero 
to  whom  they  belonged.  One  must  have  grown 
familiar  first   with   every   detail   of   the   great 

393 


394  The  Silent  Isle 

man's  life,  have  read  his  letters  and  his  bio- 
graphy, and  the  letters  written  about  him,  and 
his  Diary  if  possible,  and  all  his  books ;  one  must 
have  grown  to  admire  him  and  desire  his  pres- 
ence, and  hate  the  thought  of  the  grave  that 
separates  him  from  oneself;  until  one  has  come 
to  feel  that  the  place  where  he  slept  and  ate 
and  walked  and  talked  and  wrote  is  like  the 
field  full  of  stones  at  Luz,  where  the  ladder  was 
set  up  from  heaven  to  earth,  and  where  Jacob, 
shivering  in  his  chilly  slumbers,  saw,  in  a  moment 
of  dreamful  enlightenment,  that  the  heavenly 
staircase  may  be  let  down  in  a  moment  at  any 
place  or  hour,  and  that  the  angels  may  descend, 
carrying  bright  thoughts  and  secret  consola- 
tions from  its  cloudy  head. 

And  thus  there  can  be  for  any  one  man  but 
a  few  places  to  which  he  owes  such  a  pilgrim- 
age, because,  in  the  first  place,  the  thing  must 
not  be  too  ancient  and  remote;  it  is  of  little  use 
to  see  the  ruined  shell  of  a  great  house  in  a 
forest,  because  such  a  scene  does  not  in  the 
least  recall  what  the  eyes  of  one's  hero  saw  and 
rested  upon.  There  must  be  some  personal 
aroma  about  it;  one  must  be  able  to  see  the 
garden-paths  where  he  walked,  the  furniture 
which  he  used,  and  to  realise  the  place  in  some 
degree  as  it  appeared  to  him. 

And  then,  too,  there  must  be  some  sense  of  a 
personal  link,  an  instinctive  sympathy,  between 


Pilgrimages  395 

the  soul  of  the  writer  and  one's  own  spirit. 
It  is  not  enough  that  he  should  have  just  written 
famous  books;  they  must  be  books  that  have 
fed  one's  own  heart  and  mind,  have  whispered 
some  delicious  hope,  have  thrilled  one  with  a 
responsive  tenderness — the  writer  must  be  one 
whom,  unseen,  we  love.  It  is  not  enough  that 
one  should  recognise  his  genius,  know  him  to 
be  great;  he  must  be  near  and  dear  as  well; 
one  must  visit  the  scene  as  one  would  draw 
near  to  the  grave  of  a  father  or  a  brother,  with 
a  sense  of  love  and  loss  and  spiritual  contact. 
It  should  be  like  visiting  some  familiar  scene. 
One  must  be  able  to  say:  "Yes,  this  is  the  tree 
he  loved  and  wrote  about;  there  is  the  writing- 
table  by  the  window  that  gave  him  the  glimpse 
he  speaks  of,  of  lake  and  hill ;  these  are  the  walls 
on  which  he  liked  to  see  the  firelight  darting  on 
dark  winter  evenings." 

It  is  strange,  if  one  considers  carefully  what 
houses  they  are  that  one  would  thus  wish  to 
visit,  to  reflect  how  many  of  them  are  homes 
of  poets,  and  after  them  of  novelists.  It  is 
the  personal,  the  imaginative,  the  creative 
touch  that  weaves  the  spell.  I  do  not  think 
that  one  would  travel  far  to  see  the  house  of  a 
historian  or  a  philosopher,  however  eminent; 
I  do  not  personally  even  desire  to  see  the 
houses  of  generals  or  statesmen  or  philanthrop- 
ists.     I  would  rather  visit  Rvdal  Mount  than 


396  The  Silent  Isle 

Hughenden;  I  should  experience  a  greater  ex- 
altation of  soul  at  Haworth  than  at  Strath- 
fieldsaye.  I  would  rather  see  the  lane  where 
Tennyson  wrote  "Break,  break,  break,"  than 
Mr.  Gladstone's  library  at  Hawarden.  Not 
that  the  houses  of  statesmen  and  generals  are 
not  interesting;  I  would  take  some  trouble  to 
visit  them  if  I  were  in  the  neighbourhood  of 
them;  but  it  would  be  a  mental  rather  than  a 
spiritual  pleasure,  and  when  one  was  there  one 
would  tend  to  ask  questions  rather  than  con- 
template the  scene  in  silent  awe.  It  may  be  a 
sentimental  thing  to  say,  but  I  should  hope  to 
visit  Brantwood  and  Somersby  Rectory  with 
my  heart  full  of  prayer  and  my  eyes  full  of 
tears,  just  as  I  should  visit  some  old  and  well- 
loved  house  that  had  been  the  scene  for  me  of 
happy  days  and  loving  memories. 

What  I  find  to  regret  in  these  latter  days 
is — I  say  it  with  shame — that  there  is  no  house 
of  any  living  writer  which  I  should  visit  with 
this  sense  of  awe  and  desire  and  sacredness. 
There  are  writers  whom  I  honour  and  admire 
greatly,  whose  work  I  reverence  and  read,  but 
there  is  no  author  alive  a  summons  to  whose 
presence  I  should  obey  with  eager  solemnity 
and  devout  expectation.  That  is  perhaps  my 
own  fault,  or  the  fault  perhaps  of  my  advancing 
years;  but,  to  put  it  differently,  there  is  no 
author  now  writing  whose  book  I  should  order 


Heroes  397 

the  moment  I  saw  it  announced,  and  await 
its  arrival  with  keen  anticipation.  There  are 
books  announced  that  I  determine  I  will  see 
and  read,  but  no  books  that  I  feel  are  sure 
to  hold  some  vital  message  of  truth  and 
beauty.  I  cannot  help  feeling  that  this  is  a 
great  loss.  I  remember  the  almost  terrible  ex- 
citement with  which  I  saw  Tennyson  stalking 
out  of  Dean's  Yard  at  Westminster,  with  his  dark 
complexion,  his  long  hair,  his  strange,  ill-fitting 
clothes,  his  great  glasses,  his  dim  yet  piercing 
look.  I  recollect  the  timid  expectation  with 
which  I  went  to  meet  Robert  Browning — and  the 
disappointment  which  I  endured  in  his  presence 
at  his  commonplace  bonhomie,  his  facile,  un- 
interesting talk.  I  remember,  as  an  under- 
graduate, begging  and  obtaining  an  introduction 
to  Matthew  Arnold,  who  stood  robed  in  his 
scarlet  gown  at  an  academical  garden-party; 
and  I  shall  never  forget  the  stately  and  amiable 
condescension  with  which  he  greeted  me. 
But  what  seer  of  high  visions,  what  sayer  of 
ineffable  things,  transforming  the  common- 
place world  into  a  place  of  spirits  and  heavenly 
echoes,  now  moves  and  breathes  among  us? 
The  result  of  our  present  conditions  of  life 
seems  to  be  to  develop  a  large  number  of  effec- 
tive and  accomplished  people,  but  not  to  evolve 
great,  lonely,  majestic  figures  of  indubitable 
greatness. 


398  The  Silent  Isle 

Perhaps  there  are  personalities  whom  the 
young  and  ardent  as  whole-heartedly  desire  to 
see  and  hear  as  I  did  the  gods  of  my  youth. 
But  at  present  the  sea  and  the  depth  alike  con- 
cur in  saying,  "It  is  not  in  me." 

But  I  do  not  cease  to  hope.  I  care  not 
whether  my  hero  be  old  or  young;  I  should  like 
him  better  to  be  young;  and  if  I  could  hear  of 
the  rise  of  some  great  and  gracious  personality, 
full  of  fire  and  genius,  I  would  make  my  way  to 
his  presence,  even  though  it  involved  a  number 
of  cross-country  journeys  and  solitary  evenings 
in  country  inns,  to  lay  my  wreath  at  his  feet  and 
to  receive  his  blessing. 


LIV 

The  other  day  I  was  at  Peterborough,  and 
strolled  into  the  Close  under  a  fine,  dark, 
mouldering  archway,  to  find  myself  in  a  romantic 
world,  full  of  solemn  dignity  and  immemorial 
peace.  There  in  its  niche  stood  that  exquisite 
crumbled  statue  that  Flaxman  said  summed 
up  the  grace  of  mediasval  art.  The  quiet  canon- 
ical houses  gave  me  the  sense  of  stately  and 
pious  repose;  of  secluded  lives,  cheered  by  the 
dignity  of  worship  and  the  beauty  of  holiness. 
And  then  presently  I  was  in  the  long  new  street 
leading  out  into  the  country;  the  great  junction 
with  its  forest  of  signals,  where  the  expresses 
come  roaring  in  and  out,  and  the  huge  freight- 
trains  clank  north  and  south.  The  street 
itself,  with  its  rows  of  plane-trees,  its  big 
brick-built  chapels,  its  snug  comfortable  houses, 
with  the  electric  trams  gliding  smoothly  under 
the  crossing  wires — what  a  picture  it  gave  of 
the  new  democracy,  with  its  simple  virtues,  its 
easy  prosperity,  its  cheerful  lack  of  taste,  of 
romance!  Life  runs  easily  enough,  no  doubt, 
in   these  contented  homes,   with  their  regular 

399 


400  The  Silent  Isle 

meals,  their  bright  ugly  furniture,  their  friendly 
gossip,  their  new  clothes;  for  amusement  the 
bicycle,  the  gramophone,  the  circulating  novel. 
I  have  no  doubt  that  there  is  abundance  of 
wholesome  affection  and  camaraderie  within,  of 
full-flavoured,  local,  personal  jests,  all  the  out- 
ward signs  and  inner  resources  of  sturdy  British 
prosperity.  A  certain  civic  pride  exists,  no 
doubt,  in  the  ancient  buildings,  in  the  influx  of 
visitors,  the  envious  admiration  of  Americans. 
But,  at  first  sight,  what  a  difference  between 
the  old  and  the  new!  The  old,  no  doubt,  stood 
for  a  few  very  wealthy  and  influential  people, 
priests  and  barons,  with  a  wretched  and  down- 
trodden poor,  labouring  like  the  beasts  of  the 
field  for  life.  The  new  order  stands  for  a  few 
wealthy  people  whose  hearts  are  in  their  amuse- 
ments and  social  pleasures;  a  great,  well-to-do, 
busy,  comfortable  middle  class,  and  a  self- 
respecting  and,  on  the  whole,  prosperous  artisan 
class.  No  one,  surveying  the  change  from  the 
point  of  view  of  human  happiness,  can  doubt 
for  an  instant  that  the  new  order  is  far  richer  in 
happiness,  in  comfort,  and  in  contentment  than 
the  old. 

And  then,  too,  how  easy  it  is  to  make  the 
mistake  of  thinking  that  all  the  grace  of  anti- 
quity and  mellowness  that  hangs  about  the  old 
buildings  was  part  of  the  mediaeval  world. 
Go  back  in  fancy  for  a  little  to  the  time  when 


Peterborough  401 

that  great  front  of  the  Cathedral,  with  its  forests 
of  towers  and  pinnacles,  its  three  vast  portals, 
was  brand-new  and  white,  all  free  from  the 
scaffolding,  and  fitting  on  so  strangely  to  the 
Norman  work  behind.  I  can  well  imagine 
that  some  one  who  loved  what  was  old  and  quiet 
might  have  thought  it  even  then  a  very  bus- 
tling modern  affair,  and  heaved  a  sigh  over  the 
progress  that  had  made  it  possible. 

Moreover,  looking  closely  at  that  great  grey 
front,  with  its  three  portals,  I  am  almost  sure 
that  the  design  is  an  essentially  vulgar  one. 
It  is  much  of  it  a  front  with  no  back  to  it;  it 
is  crowded  with  useless  and  restless  ornament. 
The  rose-windows,  for  instance,  in  the  gables, 
give  light  to  nothing  but  the  rafters  of  the  roof. 
The  designer  was  evidently  afraid  of  leaving 
any  surface  plain  and  unadorned;  he  felt  im- 
pelled to  fill  every  inch  with  decoration.  In- 
deed, I  cannot  doubt  that  if  one  saw  the  West 
Front  reproduced  now,  the  connoisseurs,  who 
praise  it  so  blandly  in  its  mellow  softness, 
would  overwhelm  it  with  disapproval  and  stern 
criticism. 

Whatever  that  front,  those  soaring  towers, 
may  mean  to  us  now,  they  stood  then  for  a 
busy  and  eager  activity.  What  one  does  de- 
sire to  know,  what  is  really  important,  is  whether 
the  spirit  that  prompted  that  activity  was  a 
purer,  holier,  more  gracious  spirit  than  the 
26 


402  The  Silent  Isle 

spirit  that  underlies  the  middle-class  prosperity 
of  the  present  day.  Did  it  all  mean  a  love  of 
art,  a  sacrifice  of  comfort  and  wealth  to  a  beauti- 
ful idea,  a  radiant  hope?  Did  the  monks  or 
the  great  nobles  that  built  it,  build  it  in  a 
humble,  ardent,  and  loving  spirit — or  was  it 
partly  in  a  spirit  of  ostentation,  that  their 
church  might  have  a  new  and  impressive  front, 
partly  in  the  spirit  indicated  by  the  hymn: 

"  Whatever,  Lord,  we  lend  to  Thee, 
Repaid  a  hundred-fold  will  be"  ? 

Was  it  an  investment,  so  to  speak,  made  for 
the  sake  of  improving  their  spiritual  prosperity? 

It  is  very  difficult  to  say.  The  monks  in 
their  earlier  missionary  times  were  full  of 
enthusiasm  and  faith,  no  doubt.  But  when 
the  Abbeys  were  at  the  full  height  of 
their  prosperity,  when  they  were  vast  land- 
owners and  the  Abbot  had  his  place  in  Parlia- 
ment, when  the  monastic  life  was  a  career  for 
an  ambitious  man,  was  the  spirit  of  the  place 
a  pure  and  holy  one?  That  they  submitted 
themselves  to  a  severe  routine  of  worship  does 
not  go  for  very  much,  because  men  very  easily 
accommodate  themselves  to  a  traditional  and  a 
conventional  routine. 

And  thus  one  is  half  inclined  to  believe  that 
the  spirit  of  the  monks  in  their  prosperous  days 
was   not   very    different   from   the   spirit   that 


Peterborough  403 

prompts  railway  extension,  and  that  builds  a 
railway  terminus  with  an  ornamental  facade. 

,  And  so  when  one  sees  prosperity  spreading 
wider  and  lower,  and  the  neat  villa  residences 
begin  to  cluster  round  the  knot  of  ancient 
buildings,  we  must  not  conclude  too  hastily 
that  our  new  wealth  has  swamped  ancient 
ideals;  probably  the  ideals  of  prosperous  peo- 
ple do  not  vary  very  much,  whether  they  are 
monks  or  railway  officials.  The  monks  in  their 
decadent  days  have  no  abounding  reputation 
for  virtue  or  austerity.  One  likes  to  think  of 
them  as  lost  in  splendid  dreams  of  God's  glory 
and  man's  holiness,  but  there  is  little  to  show 
that  such  was  the  case. 

I  do  not  want  to  decry  the  ideas  of  the  monks 
in  order  to  magnify  our  modern  middle-class 
ideals.  I  do  not  for  a  moment  pretend  to  think 
that  our  national  ideals  are  very  exalted  ones 
nowadays.  I  wish  I  could  believe  it;  but  there 
is  no  sign  of  any  particular  interest  in  religion 
or  cultivation  or  art  or  literature  or  romance. 
We  have  a  certain  patriotism,  of  a  somewhat 
commercial  type;  we  have  a  belief  in  our  hon- 
esty, not,  I  fear,  wholly  well-founded.  We 
claim  to  be  plain  people  who  speak  our  mind; 
which  very  often  does  not  mean  more  than 
that  we  do  not  take  the  trouble  to  be  polite; 
we  should  all  say  that  we  valued  liberty,  which 
means  little  more  than  that  we  resent   inter- 


404  The  Silent  Isle 

ference,  and  like  to  do  things  in  our  own  way. 
But  I  do  not  think  that  we  are  at  present  a 
noble-minded  or  an  unselfish  nation,  though  we 
are  rich  and  successful,  and  have  the  good 
humour  that  comes  of  wealth  and  success. 

Peterborough  is  to  me  a  parable  of  England; 
it  stands  for  a  certain  pride  in  antiquity,  coupled 
with  a  good-natured  contempt  for  the  religious 
spirit — for,  though  these  cathedrals  of  ours  are 
well  cared  for  and  well-served,  no  one  can  say 
that  they  have  any  very  deep  influence  on  na- 
tional life.  And  it  stands,  too,  for  the  thing 
that  we  do  believe  in  with  all  our  hearts — trim, 
comfortable  material  prosperity;  a  thing  which 
bewilders  a  dreamer  like  myself,  because  it 
seems  to  be  the  deliberate  gift  and  leading  of 
God  to  our  country,  while  all  the  time  I  long  to 
believe  that  he  is  pointing  us  to  a  far  different 
hope,  and  a  very  much  quieter  and  simpler 
ideal.  How  little  we  make  of  Christ's  blessing 
on  poverty,  on  simplicity,  on  tenderness!  How 
ready  we  are  to  say  that  his  strong  words  about 
the  dangers  of  wealth  were  only  counsels  given 
to  individuals!  The  deepest  article  of  our 
creed,  that  a  man  must  make  his  way,  fight 
for  his  own  hand,  elbow  himself  to  the  front  if 
he  can — how  little  akin  that  is  to  the  essential 
spirit  of  Christ,  by  which  a  man  ought  to  lavish 
himself  for  others,  and  quit  the  world  poorer 
than  he  entered  it! 


Peterborough  405 

I  turn  again  into  the  great,  shadowy,  faintly 
lit  church,  with  all  its  interlaced  arches,  its 
colour,  its  richness  of  form ;  I  see  the  figures  of 
venerable,  white-robed  clergy  in  their  taber- 
nacled stalls,  a  little  handful  of  leisurely  wor- 
shippers. The  organ  rises  pouring  sweet  music 
from  its  forest  of  pipes.  Hark  to  what  they 
are  singing  to  the  rich  blending  of  artful 
melodies : — 

"He  hath  put  down  the  mighty  from 
their  seat,  and  hath  exalted  the  humble  and 
meek.  He  hath  filled  the  hungry  with  good 
things;  but  the  rich  He  hath  sent  empty 
away." 

What  a  message  to  thrill  through  this  palace 
of  art,  with  the  pleasant  town  without,  and  all 
the  great  trains  thundering  past!  To  whom 
is  it  all  addressed?  The  spirit  of  that  meek 
religion  seems  to  sit  shivering  in  its  gorgeous 
raiment,  heard  and  heeded  of  none.  Yet  here 
as  everywhere  there  are  quiet  hearts  that  know 
the  secret ;  there  are  patient  women,  kind  fathers, 
loving  children,  who  would  think  it  strange  and 
false  if  they  were  told  that  over  their  heads 
hangs  the  bright  aureole  of  the  saints.  What 
can  we  do,  we  who  struggle  faintly  on  our 
pilgrimage,  haunted  and  misled  by  hovering 
delusions,  phantoms  of  wealth  and  prosperity 
and  luxury,  that  hide  the  narrow  path  from 
our  bewildered  eyes?     We  can  but  resolve  to 


406  The  Silent  Isle 

be  simple  and  faithful  and  pure  and  loving, 
and  to  trust  ourselves  as  implicitly  as  we  can  to 
the  Father  who  made  us,  redeemed  us,  and 
loves  us  better  than  we  love  ourselves. 


LV 


I  have  had  a  fortnight  of  perfect  weather  here 
— the  meteorologists  call  it  by  the  horrible 
and  ugly  name  of  "anticyclone,"  which  suggests, 
even  more  than  the  word  "cyclone"  suggests, 
the  strange  weather  said  by  the  Psalmist  to 
be  in  store  for  the  unrighteous — "Upon  the 
ungodly  he  shall  rain  snares,  fire  and  hailstones, 
storm  and  tempest."  I  have  often  wondered 
what  the  fields  would  look  like  after  a  rain  of 
snares !  The  word  ' '  cyclone ' '  by  itself  suggests  a 
ghastly  whorl  of  high  vapours,  and  the  addi- 
tion of  "anti"  seems  to  make  it  even  more 
hostile.  But  an  anticyclone  in  the  springtime 
is  the  opening  of  a  door  into  paradise.  Day 
after  day  the  fields  have  lain  calm  beneath  a 
cool  and  tranquil  sun,  with  a  light  breeze  shift- 
ing from  point  to  point  in  the  compass.  Day 
after  day  I  have  swept  along  the  great  fen- 
roads,  descending  from  my  little  hill-range  into 
the  flat.  Day  by  day  I  have  steered  slowly 
across  the  gigantic  plains,  with  the  far-off 
farms  to  left  and  right  across  acres  of  dark 
plough-land,   rising    in    dust  from  the   feet  of 

407 


4-o8  The  Silent  Isle 

horses  dragging  a  harrow.  Every  now  and 
then  one  crosses  a  great  dyke,  a  sapphire 
streak  of  calm  water  between  green  flood- 
banks,  running  as  straight  as  a  line  from  horizon 
to  horizon.  One  sweeps  through  a  pretty 
village  at  long  intervals,  with  its  comfortable 
yellow-brick  houses,  and  an  old  church  stand- 
ing up  grey  in  the  sun.  It  was  on  a  day  always 
to  be  marked  with  letters  of  gold  in  my  calendar 
that  I  found  the  house  of  Bellasyze  in  a  village 
in  the  fen.  Imagine  a  great  red-brick  wall 
running  along  by  the  high  road,  with  a  pair 
of  huge  gate-posts  in  the  centre,  with  big  stone 
wyverns  on  the  top.  Inside,  a  little  park  of 
ancient  trees,  standing  up  among  grass  golden 
with  buttercups.  A  quarter  of  a  mile  away 
in  the  park,  an  incredibly  picturesque  house  of 
red  brick,  with  an  ancient  turreted  gate-house, 
innumerable  brick  chimney-stacks,  gables,  mul- 
lioned  windows,  and  oriels,  rising  from  great 
sprawling  box-trees  and  yews.  By  a  stroke  of 
fortune,  the  young  kindly  squire  was  coming 
out  at  the  gate  as  I  stood  gazing,  and  asked  me 
if  I  would  care  to  look  round.  He  led  me  up  to 
the  gate-house,  and  then  into  a  great  hall,  with 
vast  doors  of  oak,  flagged  with  stone.  "There 
is  our  ugliest  story!"  he  said,  pointing  to  the 
flags.  I  do  not  profess  to  explain  what  I  saw; 
but  there  was  in  one  place  a  stain  looking  like 
dark  blood  just  sopped  up;  and  close  by,  out- 


Bellasyze  409 

lined  in  a  damp  dimness,  the  rough  form  of  a 
human  body  with  ourstretched  arms,  just  as 
though  a  warm  corpse  had  been  lying  on  the 
cold  stones.  "That  was  where  the  young  heir 
was  killed  by  his  father,"  said  the  squire;  "his 
blood  fell  down  here — he  was  stabbed  in  the 
back — and  he  stumbled  a  pace  or  two  and  fell; 
we  can't  scrub  it  out  or  dry  it  out."  "I  sup- 
pose you  are  haunted?"  I  said.  He  laughed. 
"Well,  it  is  a  great  convenience,"  he  said.  "I 
live  here  only  in  the  summer;  I  have  a  little 
house  which  is  more  convenient  in  the  winter,  a 
little  distance  away.  I  can  never  get  a  caretaker 
here  for  the  winter — but,  bless  you,  if  I  left  every 
door  and  window  open,  there  is  not  a  soul 
in  the  place  that  would  come  near  it!"  He 
led  me  through  ranges  of  rooms  panelled,  re- 
cessed, orieled — there  were  staircases,  turret- 
chambers,  galleries  in  every  direction.  I  think 
there  must  have  been  nearly  fifty  rooms  in 
the  house,  perhaps  half-a-dozen  of  them  in- 
habited. At  one  place  he  bade  me  look  out 
of  a  little  window,  and  I  saw  below  a  small 
court  with  an  ancient  chapel  on  the  left,  the 
windows  bricked  up.  It  had  a  sinister  and 
wicked  air,  somehow.  The  squire  told  me  that 
they  had  unearthed  a  dozen  skeletons  in  that 
little  yard  as  they  were  laying  a  drain,  and  had 
buried  them  in  the  neighbouring  churchyard. 
But  the  back  of  the  house  was  still  more  ravish- 


410  The  Silent  Isle 

ing  than  the  front;  surrounded  by  great  brick 
walls,  curving  outwards,  lay  a  grassy  garden, 
with  huge  box- trees  at  the  sides,  and  in  the 
centre  many  ancient  apple-trees  in  full  bloom. 
The  place  was  bright  with  carelessly  ordered 
flowers;  and  behind,  the  ground  fell  a  little  to 
some  great  pools  full  of  sedge,  some  tumbled 
grassy  hillocks  covered  with  blackthorns,  and  a 
little  wood  red  with  buds  and  full  of  birds, 
called  by  the  delicious  name  of  "My  Lord's 
Wood."  The  great  flat  stretched  for  miles 
round. 

One  of  the  singular  charms  of  the  place  was 
that  it  had  never  undergone  a  restoration;  it 
had  only  been  carefully  patched  just  as  it  needed 
it.  I  never  saw  a  place  so  soaked  with  charm 
from  end  to  end,  its  very  wildness  giving  it  a 
grace  which  trimness  would  have  utterly  de- 
stroyed. I  stood  for  a  while  beside  the  pool, 
with  a  woodpecker  laughing  in  the  holt,  to 
watch  the  long  roofs  and  huddled  chimneys  rise 
above  the  white-flowered  orchard.  Perhaps 
in  a  stormy,  rugged  day  of  November  it  would 
be  sad  and  mournful  enough  in  its  solitary 
pastures;  but  on  this  spring  day,  with  the  sun 
lying  warm  on  the  brickwork,  it  seemed  to  have 
a  perfection  of  charm  about  it  like  the  design 
of  a  mind  intent  upon  devising  as  beautiful  a 
thing  as  could  be  made.  The  old  house  seemed 
to  have  grown  old  and  mellow  like  a  rock  or 


Bellasyze  411 

crag;  to  have  sprung  up  out  of  the  ground; 
and  nature,  working  patiently  with  rain  and 
sun  and  wind,  drooping  the  stonecrop  from 
the  parapet,  fringing  the  parapets  with  snap- 
dragons and  wallflowers,  touching  the  old  roofs 
with  orange  and  grey  lichens,  had  done  the 
rest.  No  one  shall  learn  from  me  where  the 
House  of  Bellasyze  lies;  but  I  will  revisit  it 
spring  by  spring,  like  a  hidden  treasure  of 
beauty. 

The  result  of  these  perfect  days,  full  of  life 
and  freshness,  with  all  the  loveliness  and  without 
the  langours  of  spring,  is  to  produce  in  me  a 
perfectly  inconsequent  mood  of  happiness,  which 
is  better  than  any  amount  of  philosophical  con- 
solation. The  air,  the  breeze,  the  flying  hour 
are  all  full  of  delight.  Everything  is  touched 
with  a  fine  savour  and  quality,  whether  it  be 
the  wide  view  over  the  dappled  plain,  the  blue 
waters  of  the  lonely  dyke,  the  old  farm-house 
blinking  pleasantly  among  its  barns  and  out- 
buildings, the  tall  church-tower  that  you  see 
for  miles  over  the  flat,  the  busy  cawing  of  rooks 
in  the  village  grove;  the  very  people  that  one 
meets  wear  a  smiling  and  friendly  air,  from 
the  old  labourer  trudging  slowly  home,  to  the 
jolly,  smooth-faced  ploughboy  riding  a  big 
horse,  clanking  and  plodding  down  the  high- 
way. One  sees  the  world  as  it  was  meant  to  be 
made;  a  life  in  the  open  air,  labour  among  the 


412  The  Silent  Isle 

wide  fields,  seems  the  joyful  lot  of  man.  The 
very  food  that  one  eats  by  the  quick-set  thorn 
on  the  edge  of  a  dyke,  where  the  fish  poise  and 
hang  in  dark  pools,  has  a  finer  savour,  and 
is  like  a  sacrament  of  peace;  hour  after  hour, 
from  morning  to  sunset,  one  can  range  without 
weariness  and  without  care,  one's  thoughts  re- 
duced to  a  mere  flow  of  gentle  perceptions, 
murmuring  along  like  a  clear  stream.  Pleasant, 
too,  is  the  return  home  when  one  swings  in  at 
the  familiar  gate;  and  then  comes  the  quiet 
solitary  evening  when  one  recounts  the  hoarded 
store  of  delicate  impressions.  Then  follow 
hours  of  dreamless  sleep,  till  one  wakes  again 
upon  a  bright  world,  with  the  thrushes  fluting 
in  the  shrubbery  and  the  morning  sun  flooding 
the  room. 


LVI 

It  was  by  what  we  clumsily  call  chance,  but 
really  by  what  I  am  learning  to  perceive  to  be 
the  subtlest  and  prettiest  surprises  of  the  Power 
that  walks  beside  us,  that  I  found  myself  in  Ely 
yesterday  morning — the  first  real  day  of  summer. 
The  air  was  full  of  sunshine,  like  golden  dust, 
and  all  the  plants  had  taken  a  leap  forward 
in  the  night,  and  were  unfurling  their  crumpled 
flags  as  speedily  as  they  might.  I  came  vaguely 
down  to  the  river,  guided  by  the  same  good 
spirit,  and  there  at  the  boat-wharf  I  found  a 
little  motor-launch  lying,  which  could  be  hired 
for  the  day.  I  took  it,  like  the  Lady  of  Shalott; 
but  I  did  not  write  my  name  on  the  prow,  be- 
cause it  had  already  some  silly,  darting  kind  of 
name.  A  mild,  taciturn  man  took  charge  of  my 
craft ;  and  without  delay  we  clicked  and  gurgled 
out  into  the  stream. 

I  wish  I  could  describe  the  day,  for  it  was 
sweeter  than  honey  and  the  honeycomb;  and  I 
should  like  to  pour  out  of  my  stored  sweetness 
for  others.  But  I  can  hardly  say  what  hap- 
pened.    It  was  all  just  like  the  tale  of  Shalott, 

413 


4H  The  Silent  Isle 

with  this  difference,  that  there  was  no  shadow 
of  doom  overhanging  me ;  I  felt  more  like  a  fairy- 
prince  with  some  pretty  adventure  awaiting  me 
as  soon  as  the  town,  with  gardens  and  balconies, 
should  begin  to  fringe  the  stream;  perhaps  a 
hand  would  be  waved  from  the  lawn,  embowered 
in  lilacs,  of  some  sequestered  house  by  the  water- 
side. There  was  no  singing  aloud  of  mournful 
carols  either,  but  my  heart  made  a  quiet  and 
wistful  music  of  its  own. 

I  thought  that  I  should  have  liked  a  more 
grave  and  ancient  mode  of  conveyance;  but 
how  silly  to  desire  that !  The  Lady  of  Shalott's 
boat  was  no  doubt  of  the  latest  and  neatest 
trim,  fully  up  to  her  drowsy  date;  and  as  for 
quaintness,  no  doubt  a  couple  of  hundred  years 
hence,  when  our  river-craft  may  be  cigar- 
shaped  torpedoes  of  aluminium  for  all  I  know,  a 
picture  of  myself  in  my  homely  motor-boat, 
with  antiquated  hat  and  odd  grey  suit,  will 
appear  quaint  and  old-timed  enough.  And, 
anyhow,  the  ripple  gurgled  under  the  prow, 
the  motor  ticked  tranquilly,  and  the  bub- 
bles danced  in  the  wake.  We  went  on  swiftly 
enough,  and  every  time  that  I  turned  the  great 
towers  had  grown  fainter  in  the  haze;  we  slid 
by  the  green  flood-banks,  with  here  and  there  a 
bunch  of  king-cups  blazing  in  glory,  the  elbows 
of  the  bank  full  of  white  cow-parsley,  comfrey, 
and    water-dock.     I    heard    the    sedge- warbler 


Shalott  415 

whistle  drily  in  the  willow-patch,  and  a  nightin- 
gale sang  with  infinite  sweetness  in  a  close  of 
thorn-bushes  now  bursting  into  bloom;  blue  sky- 
above,  a  sapphire  streak  of  waterway  ahead, 
green  banks  on  either  side;  a  little  enough  mat- 
ter to  fill  a  heart  with  joy.  Once  I  had  a  thrill 
when  a  pair  of  sandpipers  flicked  out  of  a  tiny 
cove  and  flew,  glancing  white,  with  pointed  wings 
ahead  of  us.  Again  we  started  them,  and  again, 
till  they  wearied  of  the  chase  and  flew  back,  with 
a  wide  circuit,  to  their  first  haunt.  A  cuckoo 
in  a  great  poplar  fluted  solemnly  and  richly 
as  we  murmured  past;  the  world  was  mostly 
hidden  from  us,  but  now  and  then  a  church 
tower  looked  gravely  over  the  bank,  and  ran 
beside  us  for  a  time,  or  the  lowing  of  cattle 
came  softly  from  a  pasture,  or  I  heard  the  laugh- 
ter of  unseen  children  from  a  cottage  garth. 
Once  or  twice  we  passed  an  inn,  with  cheerful, 
leisurely  people  sitting  smiling  together  on  a 
lawn,  like  a  scene  out  of  a  romance;  and  then  at 
last,  on  passing  Baitsbite  lock,  we  slipped  into  a 
merrier  world.  Here  we  heard  the  beat  of  row- 
locks, the  horse-hoofs  of  a  coach  thudded  on  the 
bank,  and  a  crew  of  jolly  young  men  went  glid- 
ing past,  with  a  cox  shouting  directions,  just  as  I 
might  have  been  doing  thirty  years  ago !  Thirty 
years  ago!  And  it  seems  like  yesterday,  and  I 
not  a  scrap  older  or  wiser,  though,  thank  God, 
a  good  deal  happier.     Even  so  we  drift  on  to 


416  The  Silent  Isle 

the  unseen.  Then  we  passed  a  village,  the 
thatched  cottages  with  their  white  gables  rising 
prettily  from  the  blossoming  orchards.  Ditton 
on  its  little  hill;  and  the  old  iron  bridge  thun- 
dered and  clanked  with  a  passing  train;  then 
came  the  rattle  of  the  grinds;  and  the  mean 
houses  of  Barnwell;  and  soon  we  were  gliding  up 
among  the  backs,  under  the  bridge  of  St.  John's, 
by  the  willow-hung  walks  of  Trinity,  by  the  ivied 
walls  and  trim  gardens  of  Clare,  past  the  great 
white  palace-front  of  King's,  and  so  by  the 
brick  gables  and  oriels  of  Queens'  into  the  Newn- 
ham  mill-pool.  It  was  somehow  not  like  Cam- 
bridge, but  like  some  enchanted  town  of  palaces; 
and  I  would  not  break  the  spell;  so  we  swung 
about,  and  made  no  stay,  and  then  slowly  re- 
versed the  whole  panorama  again,  through  the 
long,  still  afternoon. 

The  old  life  of  Cambridge — it  was  all  there, 
after  the  long  years,  just  the  same,  full  of 
freshness  and  laughter;  but  I  came  into  it  as 
a  revenant,  and  yet  with  no  sense  of  sadness, 
rather  of  joy  that  it  should  all  be  so  continuous 
and  bright.  I  did  not  want  it  back;  I  did  not 
desire  any  part  in  it,  but  was  glad  merely  to 
watch  and  remember.  I  thought  of  myself  as  a 
fitful  boy  full  of  dreams  and  hopes,  some  ful- 
filled, some  unfulfilled;  those  that  I  have  realised 
so  strangely  unlike  what  I  expected,  those  un- 
realised still  beckoning  with  radiant  visage.     I 


God's  Gift  417 

did  not  even  desire  any  companionship,  any 
interchange  of  thought  and  mood.  Was  it 
selfish,  dull,  unenterprising  to  be  so  content? 
I  do  not  think  so,  for  a  stream  of  gentle  emotion, 
which  I  know  was  sweet  and  which  I  think  was 
pure,  lapsed  softly  through  my  mind  all  day. 
It  is  not  always  thus  with  me,  and  I  took  the 
good  day  from  the  hands  of  God  as  a  perfect 
gift;  and  though  it  would  be  easy  to  argue  that 
I  could  have  been  better  employed,  a  deeper 
instinct  said  to  me  that  I  was  meant  to  be  thus, 
and  that,  after  all,  God  sends  us  into  the  world 
to  live,  though  often  enough  our  life  tosses  like 
a  fretful  stream  among  rocky  boulders  and 
under  troubled  skies.  God  can  give  and  he 
can  withhold ;  I  do  not  question  his  power  or  his 
right;  I  mourn  over  the  hard  gifts  from  his 
hand;  but  when  he  sends  me  a  sweet  gift,  let 
me  try  to  realise,  what  I  do  not  doubt,  that 
indeed  he  wishes  me  well. 

Once  in  the  afternoon  we  stayed  our  boat, 
and  I  climbed  to  the  top  of  the  flood-bank  and 
sate  looking  out  over  the  wide  fen;  I  saw  the 
long  dykes  run  eastward,  the  far-off  churches, 
the  distant  hazy  hills;  and  I  thought  of  all  the 
troubles  that  men  make  for  each  other,  adding 
so  wantonly  to  the  woes  of  the  world.  And 
I  wondered  what  was  this  strange  fibre  of  pain 
so  inwoven  in  the  life  of  the  world,  wondered 
wistfully  and  rebelliously,  till  I  felt  that  I  drew 
27 


418  The  Silent  Isle 

nearer  in  that  quiet  hour  to  the  Heart  of  God. 
I  could  not  be  mistaken.  There  was  peace 
hidden  there,  the  peace  that  to-day  brooded 
over  the  kindly  earth,  all  carpeted  with  deli- 
cate green,  in  the  cool  water  lapping  in  the 
reeds,  in  the  green  thorn-bush  and  the  birds' 
sudden  song,  even  in  this  restless  heart  that 
would  fain  find  its  haven  and  its  home. 


LVII 

To-day  was  oppressively  hot,  brooding,  air- 
less; or  rather,  not  so  much  without  air,  as  that 
the  air  was  thick  and  viscous  like  honey,  with- 
out the  thin,  fine  quality.  One  drank  rather 
than  breathed  it.  Yet  nature  revelled  and  re- 
joiced in  it  with  an  almost  shameless  intoxica- 
tion; the  trees  unfolded  their  leaves  and  shook 
themselves  out,  crumpled  by  the  belated  and 
chilly  spring.  The  air  was  full  of  clouds  of 
hurrying,  dizzy  insects,  speeding  at  a  furious 
rate,  on  no  particular  errand,  but  merely  stung 
with  the  fierce  joy  of  life  and  motion.  In  the 
road  crawled  stout  bronze-green  beetles,  in 
blind  and  clumsy  haste,  pushing  through  grass- 
blades,  tumbling  over  stones,  waving  feeble  legs 
as  they  lay  helpless  on  their  backs,  with  the  air 
of  an  elderly  clergyman  knocked  down  by  an 
omnibus — and,  on  recovering  their  equilibrium, 
struggling  breathlessly  on.  The  birds  gobbled 
fiercely  in  all  directions,  or  sang  loud  and  sweet 
upon  the  hedges.  I  saw  half-a-dozen  cuckoos, 
gliding  silvery  grey  and  beating  the  hedges  for 
nests.  Everything  was  making  the  most  of  life, 
in  a  prodigious  hurry  to  live. 

419 


420  The  Silent  Isle 

Indeed,  I  was  very  well  content  with  the 
world  myself  as  I  sauntered  through  the  lanes. 
I  found  a  favourite  place,  an  old  clunch-quarry, 
on  the  side  of  a  hill,  where  the  white  road  comes 
sleepily  up  out  of  the  fen.  It  is  a  pretty  place, 
the  quarry;  it  is  all  grass-grown  now,  and  is  full 
of  small  dingles  covered  with  hawthorns.  It  is 
a  great  place  for  tramps  to  camp  in,  and  half 
the  dingles  have  little  grey  circles  in  them  where 
the  camping  fires  have  been  lit.  I  did  not  mind 
that  evidence  of  life,  but  I  did  not  like  the  cast- 
off  clothing,  draggled  hats,  coats,  skirts,  and 
boots  that  lay  about.  I  never  can  fathom  the 
mystery  of  tramps'  wardrobes.  They  are  never 
well  dressed  exactly,  but  wherever  they  en- 
camp they  appear  to  discard  clothing  enough 
for  two  or  three  persons,  clothing  which,  though 
I  should  not  personally  like  to  make  use  of  it, 
still  appears  to  be  serviceable  enough.  I  sup- 
pose it  is  a  part  of  the  haphazard  life  of  the  open 
air,  and  that  if  a  tramp  gets  an  old  coat  given 
him  which  is  better  than  his  own,  he  just  leaves 
the  old  one  behind  him  at  the  next  halting- 
place. 

The  chalk-pit  to-day  was  full  of  cowslips  and 
daisies,  the  former  in  quite  incredible  pro- 
fusion. I  suppose  it  is  a  cowslip  year.  The 
common  plants  seem  to  have  cycles,  and  almost 
each  year  has  a  succession  of  characteristic 
flowers,  which  have  found,  I  suppose,  the  par- 


The  Chalk-Pit  421 

ticular  arrangements  of  the  season  suit  them; 
or  rather,  I  suppose  that  an  outburst  of  a  par- 
ticular flower  in  a  particular  year  shows  that  the 
previous  year  was  a  good  seeding-time.  This 
year  has  been  remarkable  for  two  plants  so 
far,  a  sort  of  varnished  green  ground-weed,  with 
a  small  white  flower,  and  a  dull  crimson  dead- 
nettle  ;  both  of  them  have  covered  the  ground  in 
places  in  huge  patches.  This  is  both  strange  and 
pleasant,  I  think. 

I  loitered  about  in  my  chalk-pit  for  a  while; 
noted  a  new  flower  that  sprinkled  the  high 
grassy  ledges  that  I  had  never  seen  there  before ; 
and  then  sate  down  in  a  little  dingle  that  com- 
manded a  wide  view  of  the  fen.  The  landscape 
to-day  was  dark  with  a  sort  of  indigo  blue 
shadows;  the  clouds  above  big  and  threatening, 
as  though  they  were  nursing  the  thunder — the 
distance  veiled  in  a  blue-grey  haze.  Field  after 
field,  with  here  and  there  a  clump  of  trees,  ran 
out  to  the  far  horizon.  A  partridge  chirred 
softly  in  the  pastures  up  above  me,  and  a  wild 
screaming  of  sparrows  came  at  intervals  from  a 
thorn-thicket,  where  they  seemed  to  be  hold- 
ing a  fierce  and  disorderly  meeting. 

I  should  like  to  be  able  to  recover  the  thread 
of  my  thoughts  in  that  quiet  grassy  place,  be- 
cause they  ran  on  with  an  equable  sparkle,  quite 
without  cause  or  reason.  I  had  nothing  particu- 
larly pleasing  to  think  about ;  but  the  mood  of 


422  The  Silent  Isle 

retrospect  and  anticipation  seemed  to  ramble 
about,  picking  sweet-smelling  flowers  from  the 
past  and  future  alike.  I  seemed  to  desire  no- 
thing and  to  regret  nothing.  My  cup  was  full  of 
a  pleasant  beverage,  neither  cloying  nor  intoxi- 
cating, and  the  glad  springtime  tempered  it 
nicely  to  my  taste.  There  seemed  to  brood  in 
the  air  a  quiet  benevolence  as  of  a  Father  watch- 
ing His  myriad  children  at  play;  and  yet  as  I 
saw  a  big  blackbird,  with  a  solemn  eye,  hop 
round  a  thorn-bush  with  a  writhing  worm  fes- 
tooned round  his  beak,  I  realised  that  the  play 
was  a  deadly  tragedy  to  some  of  the  actors.  I 
suppose  that  such  thoughts  ought  to  have  ruffled 
the  tranquil  mood,  but  they  did  not,  for  the 
whole  seemed  so  complete.  I  suppose  that  man 
walks  in  a  vain  shadow;  but  to-day  it  only 
seemed  that  he  disquiets  himself  in  vain.  And 
it  was  not  a  merely  selfish  hedonism  that  thrilled 
me,  for  a  large  part  of  my  joy  was  that  we  all 
seemed  to  rejoice  together.  As  far  as  the  eye 
could  see,  and  for  miles  and  miles,  the  flowers 
were  turning  their  fragrant  heads  to  the  light, 
and  the  birds  singing  clear.  And  I  rejoiced 
with  them  too,  and  shared  my  joy  with  all  the 
brave  world. 


LVIII 

One  of  the  most  impressive  passages  in  Words- 
worth's poems  describes  how  he  rowed  by  night, 
as  a  boy,  upon  Esthwaite  Lake,  and  experi- 
enced a  sense  of  awestruck  horror  at  the  sight 
of  a  dark  peak,  travelling,  as  the  boat  moved, 
beyond  and  across  the  lower  and  nearer  slopes, 
seeming  to  watch  and  observe  the  boy.  Of 
course  it  may  be  said  that  such  a  feeling  is  es- 
sentially subjective,  and  that  the  peak  was  but 
obeying  natural  and  optical  laws,  and  had  no 
concern  whatever  with  the  boy.  That  there 
should  be  any  connection  between  the  child 
and  the  bleak  mountains  is,  of  course,  inconsist- 
ent with  scientific  laws.  But  to  arrive  at  a 
scientific  knowledge  of  nature  is  not  at  all  the 
same  thing  as  arriving  at  the  truth  about  her; 
one  may  analyse  everything,  peak  and  lake 
and  moonlight  alike,  into  its  component  ele- 
ments, and  show  that  it  is  all  matter  animated 
and  sustained  by  certain  forces.  But  one  has 
got  no  nearer  to  knowing  what  matter  or  force 
is,  or  how  they  came  into  being. 

And  then,  too,  even  from  the  scientific  point  of 

423 


424  The  Silent  Isle 

view,  the  subjective  effect  of  the  contemplation 
of  nature  by  the  mind  is  just  as  much  a  phe- 
nomenon; it  is  there — it  demands  recognition. 
The  emotions  of  man  are  a  scientific  fact,  too, 
and  an  even  more  complicated  scientific  fact 
than  matter  and  force.  When  Wordsworth 
says  that  he  was 

"Contented  if  he  might  enjoy 
The  things  that  others  understand," 

he  is  buu  stating  the  fact  that  there  is  a  mystical 
poetical  perception  of  nature  as  well  as  a  scien- 
tific one.  Perhaps  when  science  has  done  her 
work  on  elemental  atoms  and  forces,  she  will 
turn  to  the  analysis  of  psychological  problems. 
And  meanwhile  it  must  suffice  to  recognise  that 
the  work  of  the  scientist  is  as  essentially  poetical, 
if  done  in  a  certain  spirit,  as  the  work  of  the  poet. 
It  is  essentially  poetical,  because  the  deeper 
that  the  man  of  science  dives  into  the  mystery, 
the  darker  and  more  bewildering  it  becomes. 
Science,  instead  of  solving  the  mystery,  has 
added  enormously  to  its  complexity  by  dispos- 
ing of  the  old  comfortable  theory  that  man  is  the 
darling  of  Nature  and  that  all  things  were  created 
for  his  use.  We  know  now  that  man  is  only  a 
local  and  temporary  phenomenon  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  some  dim  and  gigantic  law;  that  he  per- 
haps represents  the  highest  development  which 
that  law  has  at  present  evolved,  but  that  proba- 


Nature  and  Science  425 

bly  we  are  rather  at  the  threshold  than  at  the 
climax  of  evolution,  and  that  there  will  be  de- 
velopments in  the  future  that  we  cannot  even 
dimly  apprehend.  If  the  contemplation  of 
nature  and  the  scientific  analysis  of  nature  are 
meant  to  have  any  effect  upon  humanity  at 
all,  it  seems  as  though  both  were  intended  to 
stimulate  our  wonder  and  to  torture  us  with  the 
desire  for  solving  the  enigma. 

Perhaps  the  difference  between  the  poetical 
view  and  the  scientific  view  of  nature  is  this — 
that  while  scientific  investigation  stimulates  a 
man  to  penetrate  the  secret  as  far  as  he  can, 
with  the  noble  desire  to  contribute  what  minute 
discoveries  he  may  to  the  solution  of  the  pro- 
blem, the  poetical  contemplation  of  nature  tends 
to  produce  in  the  mind  a  greater  tranquillity 
of  emotion.  The  scientist  must  feel  that,  even 
when  he  has  devoted  his  whole  life  to  investiga- 
tion, he  has  but  helped  on  the  possibilities  of 
solution  a  little.  There  can  be  no  sense  of  per- 
sonal fruition  as  long  as  the  abyss  remains  un- 
plumbed;  and  therefore  nature  is  to  him  like  a 
blind  and  blank  mystery  that  reveals  its  secrets 
slowly  and  almost  reluctantly,  and  defies  in- 
vestigation. Whereas  the  poet  may  rather 
feel  that  he  at  this  precise  point  of  time  may 
master  and  possess  the  emotion  that  nature  can 
provide  for  his  soul,  and  that  he  is  fully  blessed 
if  the  sight  of  the  mountain-head  above  the  sun- 


426  The  Silent  Isle 

set  cloud-banks,  the  green  gloom  of  the  summer 
woodland,  the  lake  lashed  with  slanting  storm, 
gives  him  a  sense  of  profound  emotion,  and  fills 
him  to  the  brim  with  the  pure  potion  of  beauty. 
He  may  rest  in  that,  for  the  time;  he  may 
feel  that  this  is  the  message  of  nature  to  him, 
thus  and  now;  and  that  the  more  perfectly 
and  passionately  that  the  beauty  of  nature 
comes  home  to  him,  the  nearer  he  comes  to  the 
thought  of  God. 

This  does  not,  either  in  the  case  of  the  man  of 
science  or  the  poet,  solve  the  further  mystery 
— the  mystery  of  complex  human  relationships. 
But  the  investigation  of  science  ardently  pur- 
sued is  more  likely  to  tend  to  isolate  the  explorer 
from  his  kind  than  the  poetical  contemplation 
of  nature,  for  the  simple  reason  that  the  scien- 
tist's business  is  not  primarily  with  emotion 
but  with  concrete  fact;  while  to  the  poet  the 
emotions  of  love  and  friendship,  of  patriotism 
and  duty,  will  all  tend  to  be  the  object  of  im- 
passioned speculation  too.  Both  alike  will  be 
apt  to  be  somewhat  isolated  from  the  ordinary 
life  of  the  world,  because  both  to  the  poet  and 
the  man  of  science  the  present  condition  of 
things,  the  problems  of  the  day,  will  be  dwarfed 
by  the  thought  of  the  vast  accumulation  of  past 
experience;  both  alike  will  tend  to  minimise  the 
value  of  human  effort,  because  they  will  both  be 
aware  that  the  phenomenon  of  human  activity 


Nature  and  Science  427 

and  human  volition  is  but  the  froth  and  scum 
working  on  the  lip  of  some  gigantic  forward- 
moving  tide,  and  that  men  probably  do  not  so 
much  choose  what  they  shall  do,  as  do  what 
they  are  compelled  to  do  by  some  unfathom- 
able power  behind  and  above  them.  This 
thought  may  seem,  to  men  of  practical  activity, 
to  weaken  the  force  of  effective  energy  in  both 
poet  and  scientist.  But  they  will  be  content  to 
be  misunderstood  on  this  point,  because  they 
will  be  aware  that  such  activity  as  they  mani- 
fest is  the  direct  effect  of  something  larger  and 
greater  than  human  volition,  and  that  the 
busiest  lives  are  as  much  the  inevitable  outcome 
of  this  insuperable  force  as  their  own  more 
secluded,  more  contemplative  lives. 


LIX 

The  Mareway  is  an  old  track  or  drift-road,  dat- 
ing from  primitive  times,  which  diverges  from  the 
Old  North  Road  and  runs  for  some  miles  along 
the  top  of  the  low  chalk  downs  which  bound  my 
southern  horizon.  Its  name  is  a  corruption  of 
the  word  Mary — Mary's  way — for  there  was  an 
ancient  shrine  of  pilgrimage  dedicated  to  the 
Virgin  Mary  that  stood  on  the  broad  low  bluff 
still  known  as  Chapel  Hill,  where  the  downs 
sink  into  the  well-watered  plain.  No  trace  of 
the  shrine  exists,  and  it  is  not  known  where  it 
stood.  Perhaps  its  walls  have  been  built  into  the 
little  irregular  pile  of  farm-buildings  which  stands 
close  to  where  the  way  ends.  In  a  field  hard 
by  that  spot,  the  leaden  seal  of  a  Pope,  the  bulla 
that  gives  its  name  to  a  Pope's  bull,  was  once 
ploughed  up;  but  the  chapel  itself,  which  was 
probably  a  very  humble  place,  was  unroofed 
and  wrecked  in  an  outburst  of  Puritanical  zeal, 
with  a  practical  piety  which  could  not  bear 
that  a  place  should  gather  about  itself  so  many 
hopes  and  prayers  and  holy  associations.  Well, 
it  is  all  history,  both  the  trust  that  raised  the 

428 


The  Old  Road  429 

shrine  and  the  zeal  that  destroyed  it;  and  we 
are  the  richer,  not  the  poorer,  for  our  losses 
as  well  as  for  our  gains. 

The  Mare  way  passes  through  no  villages,  and 
only  gives  access  to  a  few  lonely,  wind-swept 
farms.  The  villages  tend  to  nestle  along  the 
roots  of  the  down,  in  sheltered  valleys  where  the 
streams  break  out,  the  orchard  closes  and  cot- 
tage gardens  creeping  a  little  way  up  the  gentle 
slopes;  and  thus  when  the  time  came  for  the 
roads  to  be  metalled  there  was  little  use  for  the 
high  ridgeway;  for  its  only  advantage  had  been 
that  it  gave  in  more  unsettled  times  a  securer 
and  more  secluded  route  for  the  pack-horse  of 
the  pilgrim — a  chance  of  seeing  if  danger  threat- 
ened or  risk  awaited  him. 

And  so  the  old  road  keeps  its  solitary  course, 
unfrequented  and  untrimmed,  along  the  broad 
back  of  the  down.  Here  for  a  space  it  is  ab- 
sorbed into  a  plough-land,  there  it  melts  with 
a  soft  dimple  into  the  pasture;  but  for  the  most 
part  it  runs  between  high  thorn  hedges,  here  with 
deep  ruts  worn  by  heavy  farm-carts,  there  trod- 
den into  miry  pools  by  sheep.  In  places  it  passes 
for  a  space  through  patches  of  old  woodland, 
showing  by  the  deep  dingles,  the  pleasant  lack 
of  ordered  planting,  that  it  is  a  tract  of  ancient 
forest-land  never  disparked.  Here  you  may  see, 
shouldering  above  the  irregular  copse,  the  bulk 
of    some    primeval    oak,    gnarled    and    hollow- 


43°  The  Silent  Isle 

trunked,  spared  partly  because  it  would  afford 
no  timber  worth  cutting,  and  partly,  we  may 
hope,  from  some  tender  sense  of  beauty  and 
veneration  which  even  now,  by  a  hint  of  in- 
stinctive tradition  haunting  the  rustic  mind, 
attends  the  ancient  tree  and  surrounds  it  with 
a  sense  of  respect  too  dim  to  be  called  a  memory 
even  of  forgotten  things.  To  right  and  left 
green  roads  dip  down  to  the  unseen  villages,  and 
here  and  there  the  way  itself  becomes  a  metalled 
road  leading  to  some  larger  highway;  but  even 
so,  you  can  soon  regain  the  grassy  tract,  follow- 
ing the  slow  curve  of  the  placid  down. 

There  is  no  sweeter  place  to  be  found  on  a 
hot  summer  day  than  the  old  drift-road.  The 
hedges  are  in  full  leaf,  and  the  undergrowth, 
sprinkled  with  flowers,  weaves  its  tapestry  over 
the  barer  stems  of  the  quicksets.  The  thrushes 
sing  clear  in  the  tiny  thickets,  and  the  black- 
bird flirts  with  a  sudden  outcry  in  and  out  of 
his  leafy  harbourage.  Here  the  hedge  is  all 
hung  with  briony  or  traveller's  joy;  there  is  a 
burst  of  wild-roses,  pale  discs  of  faintest  rose- 
jacinth,  each  with  a  full-seeded  heart.  The 
elder  spreads  its  wide  cakes  of  bloom,  and  the 
rich  scent  hangs  heavy  on  the  air.  One  seems 
in  a  moment  to  penetrate  the  very  heart  of  the 
deep  country-side,  and  even  the  shepherd  or 
the  labourer  whom  one  passes  shares  the  silence 
of  the  open  field,   and  the  same  immemorial 


The  Old  Road  431 

quality  of  quiet  simplicity  and  primitive  work. 
It  is  then  that  there  flashes  upon  one  a  sense  of 
the  inexplicable  mystery  of  these  inexpressive 
lives,  toiling  to  live  and  living  to  toil,  half 
pathetic,  half  dignified,  wholly  mysterious  in 
the  lie  that  they  give,  by  their  meek  persistence, 
to  restless  ambitions  and  dreams  of  social 
amelioration.  For,  whatever  happens,  such 
work  must  still  be  done  until  the  end  of  time; 
and  the  more  that  mind  and  soul  awake,  the 
less  willing  will  men  be  to  acquiesce  in  such  un- 
cheered  drudgery.  If  one  could  but  educate  the 
simpler  hearts  into  a  joyful  and  tranquil  con- 
sent to  conditions  which,  after  all,  are  simple 
and  wholesome  enough;  if  one  could  implant 
the  contented  love  of  field  and  wood,  wide  airs 
and  flying  clouds,  life,  love,  ease,  labour,  sorrow 
— all  that  is  best  in  our  experience — could  be 
tasted  here  and  thus;  while  the  troubles  bred 
by  the  covetous  brain  and  the  scheming  mind 
would  find  no  place  here.  It  is  a  better  lot, 
after  all,  to  live  and  feel  than  to  express  life  and 
feeling,  however  subtly  and  ingeniously,  and  I 
for  one  would  throw  down  in  an  instant  all  my 
vague  dreams  and  impossible  hopes,  my  artificial 
cares  and  fretful  ambitions,  for  a  life  uncon- 
scious of  itself  and  an  unimpaired  serenity  of 
mood.  The  dwellers  in  these  quiet  places 
neither  brood  over  what  might  have  been  nor 
exercise  themselves  over  what  will  be.     They 


432  The  Silent  Isle 

live  in  the  moment,  and  the  moment  suffices 
them. 

In  the  winter  weather  the  Mareway,  in  its 
dreary  and  sodden  bareness,  is  to  my  mind  an 
even  more  impressive  place.  The  wind  comes 
sharply  up  over  the  shoulder  of  the  down.  The 
trees  are  all  bare;  the  pasture  is  yellow-pale. 
The  water  lies  in  the  ruts  and  ditches.  The 
silence  in  the  pauses  of  the  wind  is  intense. 
You  can  hear  the  soft  sound  of  grass  pulled  by  the 
lips  of  unnumbered  browsing  sheep  behind  the 
hedgerow,  or  the  cry  of  farmyard  fowls  from 
the  byre  below,  the  puffing  of  the  steam-plough 
on  the  sloping  fallow,  the  far-off  railway  whistle 
across  the  wide  valley.  The  rooks  stream  home 
from  distant  fields,  and  discuss  the  affairs  of  the 
race  with  cheerful  clamour  in  the  depth  of  the 
wood.  The  day  darkens,  and  a  smouldering 
sunset,  hung  with  gilded  clouds  streaked  with 
purple  bars,  begins  to  burn  behind  the  bare- 
stemmed  copse. 

But  what  is,  after  all,  the  deepest  charm  that 
invests  the  old  road  is  the  thought  of  all  the  sad 
and  tender  associations  clothing  it  in  the  minds 
of  so  many  vanished  generations.  Even  an 
old  house  has  a  haunting  grace  enough,  as  a 
place  where  men  have  been  born  and  died,  have 
loved  and  enjoyed  and  suffered;  but  a  road 
like  this,  ceaselessly  trodden  by  the  feet  of 
pilgrims,  all  of  them  with  some  pathetic  urgency 


The  Old  Road  433 

of  desire  in  their  hearts,  some  hope  unfulfilled, 
some  shadow  of  sickness  or  sin  to  banish,  some 
sorrow  making  havoc  of  home,  is  touched  by 
that  infinite  pathos  that  binds  all  human  hearts 
together  in  the  face  of  the  mystery  of  life.  What 
passionate  meetings  with  despair,  what  eager 
upliftings  of  desirous  hearts,  must  have  thrilled 
the  minds  of  the  feeble  and  travel-worn  com- 
panies that  made  their  slow  journeys  along  the 
grassy  road!  And  one  is  glad  to  think,  too, 
that  there  must  doubtless  have  been  many 
that  returned  gladder  than  they  came,  with  the 
burden  shifted  a  little,  the  shadow  lessened,  or 
at  least  with  new  strength  to  carry  the  familiar 
load.  For  of  this  we  may  be  sure,  that  however 
harshly  we  may  despise  what  we  call  supersti- 
tion, or  however  firmly  we  may  wave  away 
what  we  hold  to  have  been  all  a  beautiful 
mistake,  there  is  some  fruitful  power  that  dwells 
and  lingers  in  places  upon  which  the  hearts  of 
men  have  so  concentred  their  swift  and  poignant 
emotions — for  all,  at  least,  to  whom  the  soul  is 
more  than  the  body,  and  whose  thoughts  are 
not  bounded  and  confined  by  the  mere  material 
shapes  among  which,  in  the  days  of  our  earthly 
limitations,  we  move  uneasily  to  and  fro. 
28 


EPILOGUE 

A  blunt  and  candid  critic,  commenting  on  Keats' s 
famous  axiom,  "Beauty  is  Truth,  Truth  Beauty,'* 
said:  ! '  Then  what  is  the  use  of  having  two  words 
for  the  same  thing  ?  "  And  it  is  true  that  words 
cease  to  have  any  real  meaning  when  they  are  so 
loosely  applied.  The  same  mistake  is  often  made 
about  happiness.  It  is  supposed  to  be,  not  a 
quality,  but  a  condition,  or  rather  an  equipoise  of 
qualities  and  conditions.  It  is  spoken  of  and 
thought  of  as  if  it  were  a  sort  of  blend  of  virtue 
and  health  and  amusement  and  sunshiny  weather, 
and  no  doubt  it  is  often  found  in  combination  with 
these  things.  But  it  is  a  separate  quality,  for  all 
that,  and  not  merely  a  result  of  faculties  and  cir- 
cumstances. It  is  strangely  and  wilfully  indepen- 
dent of  its  surroundings,  and  it  is  not  inconsistent 
with  the  gravest  discomfort  of  body  and  even  afflic- 
tion of  mind.  A  ruinous  combination  of  distressing 
circumstances  does  not  by  any  means  inevitably 
produce  unhappiness.  The  martyr  who  sings  at 
the  stake  among  the  flames  is  presumably  happy. 
It  may  be  said  that  he  balances  one  consideration 
against  another,  and  decides  that  his  condition  is, 

434 


Epilogue  435 

on  the  whole,  enviable  and  delightful;  but  I  do  not 
believe  that  it  is  a  mental  process  at  all,  and  if  the 
martyr  is  happy,  he  is  so  inevitably  and  in- 
stinctively. Some  would  urge  that  happiness  is 
only  an  effect,  like  colour.  There  is  no  colour 
in  the  dark,  but  as  soon  as  light  is  admitted, 
a  thing  that  we  call  green,  such  as  a  leaf  or  a 
wall-paper,  has  the  power  of  selecting  and  reflect- 
ing the  green  rays,  and  rejecting  all  rays  that  are 
not  green.  But  the  leaf  or  the  paper  is  not  in 
itself  green;  it  has  only  a  power  of  seizing  upon 
and  displaying  greenness.  So  some  would  urge 
that  temperaments  are  not  inherently  happy,  but 
have  the  power  or  the  instinct  for  extracting  the 
happy  elements  out  of  life,  and  rejecting  or  nul- 
lifying the  unhappy  elements.  But  this  I  believe 
to  be  a  mistake;  the  happy  temperament  is  not 
necessarily  made  unhappy  by  being  plunged  in 
misfortune,  while  the  unhappy  temperament  has 
the  power  of  secreting  imhappiness  out  of  the 
most  agreeable  combination  of  circumstances. 
Every  one  must  surely  recollect  occasions  in  their 
own  lives  when,  by  all  the  rules  of  the  game,  they 
ought  to  have  been  unhappy,  while  as  a  matter  of 
fact  they  were  entirely  tranquil  and  contented.  I 
have  been  happy  in  a  dentist's  chair,  and  by  far 
the  happiest  holiday  I  ever  spent  in  my  life  was 
under  surroundings  of  discomfort  and  squalor 
such  as  I  never  before  or  since  experienced. 
Those  surroundings  were  certainly  not  in  them- 


436  The  Silent  Isle 

selves  productive  of  happiness;  but  neither  did 
they  detract  from  it.  The  pathos  of  the  situation 
is  that  we  all  desire  happiness — it  is  merely  prig- 
gish to  pretend  that  it  is  otherwise — and  that  we 
do  not  know  in  the  least  how  to  attain  it.  Some 
few  people  go  straight  for  it  and  reach  it;  some 
people  find  it  by  turning  their  back  upon  what  they 
most  desire,  and  walking  in  the  opposite  direction. 
I  had  a  friend  once  who  made  up  his  mind  that 
to  be  happy  he  must  make  a  fortune.  He  went 
through  absurd  privations  and  endured  intoler- 
able labours;  he  did  make  a  fortune,  and  retired 
upon  it  at  an  early  age,  and  immediately  became 
a  thoroughly  unhappy  man,  having  lost  all  power 
of  enjoying  or  employing  his  leisure,  and 
finding  himself  hopelessly  and  irremediably 
bored.  Of  course,  boredom  is  the  surest  source  of 
unhappiness,  but  boredom  is  not  the  result  of  the 
things  we  do  or  avoid  doing,  but  some  inner 
weariness  of  spirit,  which  imports  itself  into 
occupation  and  leisure  alike,  if  it  is  there.  There 
is  no  nostrum,  no  receipt  for  taking  it  away.  A 
kindly  adviser  will  say  to  a  bored  man,  "All  this 
discontent  comes  from  thinking  too  much  about 
yourself;  if  only  you  would  throw  yourself  a  little 
into  the  lives  and  problems  of  others,  it  would  all 
disappear!"  Of  course  it  would!  But  it  is  just 
what  the  bored  man  cannot  do;  and  the  advice  is 
just  as  practical  as  to  say  encouragingly  to  a  man 
suffering  from   toothache,    "If  the    pain   would 


Epilogue  437 

only  go  away,  you  would  soon  be  welly  Ruskin 
was  once  consulted  by  an  anxious  person,  who 
complained  that  he  was  unhappy,  and  said  that  he 
attributed  it  to  the  fact  that  he  was  so  useless. 
Ruskin  replied  with  trenchant  good  sense:  "It  is 
your  duty  to  try  to  be  innocently  happy  first,  and 
useful  afterwards  if  you  can." 

What,  then,  can  we  do  in  the  matter?  How  are 
we  to  secure  happiness?  The  answer  is  that  we 
cannot;  that  we  must  take  it  as  it  comes,  like  the 
sunshine  and  the  spring.  Few  of  us  are  in  a  posi- 
tion to  alter  at  a  moment's  notice  the  course  of  our 
lives.  It  is  more  or  less  laid  down  for  us  what  paths 
we  have  to  tread,  and  in  whose  company.  We  can 
to  a  certain  extent,  taught  by  grim  experience  of 
the  habits,  thoughts,  tempers,  passions,  antici- 
pations, retrospects,  that  disturb  our  tranquillity, 
avoid  occasions  of  stumbling.  We  can  undertake 
small  responsibilities,  which  we  shall  be  ashamed 
to  neglect;  we  can,  so  to  speak,  diet  our  minds  and 
hearts,  avoiding  unwholesome  food  and  debilitating 
excesses.  To  a  certain  extent,  I  say,  for  the  old  fault 
has  a  horrid  pertinacity, and  even  when  felled  in  fair 
fight,  has  a  vile  trick  of  recovering  its  energies  and 
leaping  on  us  from  some  ambush  by  the  way,  as  we 
saunter,  blithely  conscious  of  our  victory.  It  may 
be  a  discouraging  and  an  oppressive  thought,  but 
the  only  hope  lies  in  good  sense  and  patience. 
There  are  no  short  cuts ;  we  have  to  tread  every  inch 
of  the  road. 


438  The  Silent  Isle 

But  we  may  at  least  do  one  tiling.  We  may 
speak  frankly  of  our  experiences,  without  either 
pose  or  concealment.  It  does  us  no  harm  to  con- 
fess our  failures,  and  it  puts  courage  into  other 
pilgrims,  who  know  at  least  that  they  are  not  alone 
in  their  encounters  with  the  hobgoblins.  And  no 
less  frankly,  too,  may  we  speak  of  the  fine  things 
that  we  have  seen  and  heard  by  the  way,  the  blue 
hills  and  winding  waters  of  which  we  have  caught 
a  glimpse  from  the  brow  of  the  wind-swept  hill, 
the  talk  and  aspect  of  other  wayfarers  whom  we 
have  met,  the  noble  buildings  of  the  ancient  city, 
the  stately  avenue  which  the  dull  road  intersects 
unaware,  the  embowered  hamlet,  the  leafy  forest 
dingle,  the  bleat  of  sheep  on  the  dewy  upland, 
the  birds'  song  at  evening — all  that  strikes  sharp 
and  clear  and  desirable  upon  our  fresh  or  tired 
sense. 

For  one  thing  is  certain,  that  the  end  is  not  yet; 
and  that  there  is  something  done  for  the  soul  both 
by  the  morning  brightness  and  the  evening  heavi- 
ness which  can  be  effected  in  no  other  way.  And 
in  this  spirit  we  may  look  back  on  our  mistakes, 
sad  as  they  were,  and  on  our  triumphs,  which  are 
sometimes  sadder  still,  and  know  that  they  were  not 
mere  accidents  and  obstacles  which  might  have 
been  otherwise — they  were  rather  the  very  stuff 
and  essence  of  the  soul  showing  through  its  en- 
folding garb. 

And  then,  too,  if  we  have  suffered,  as  we  all 


Epilogue  439 

must  suffer  if  we  have  any  heart  or  blood  or  brain  at 
all,  we  can  learn  the  blessed  fact  of  the  utter  power- 
lessness  of  suffering  to  hurt  or  darken  us.  Its 
horror  lies  in  the  continuance  of  it,  in  the  shud- 
dering anticipation  of  all  we  may  yet  have  to  en- 
dure; but  once  over,  it  becomes  instantly  either  like 
a  cloud  melting  in  the  blue  of  heaven,  or,  better 
still,  a  joyful  memory  of  a  pain  that  braced  and 
purified.  No  one  ever  gives  a  thought,  except  a 
grateful  one,  to  past  suffering.  If  it  leaves  its 
handwriting  on  brow  and  cheek,  it  leaves  no 
shadow  on  the  spirit  within.  It  is  so  easy  to  see 
this  in  the  lives  of  others,  however  hard  it  is  to 
realise  it  for  oneself.  What  interest  is  there  in  the 
record  of  the  life  of  a  perfectly  prosperous  and 
equable  person?  And  what  inspiration  is  equal 
to  that  which  comes  when  we  read  the  life  of  one 
who  suffered  much,  when  we  see  the  hope  that  rose 
superior  to  thwarted  designs  and  broken  purposes, 
and  the  joy  that  came  of  realising  that  not  through 
easy  and  graceful  triumph  is  the  soul  made  strong  ? 
Why  does  one  ask  oneself  about  the  dead  hero, 
when  his  life  rounds  itself  to  the  view,  not  whether 
he  had  enough  of  prosperity  and  honour  to  content 
him,  but  whether  he  had  enough  of  pain  and  self- 
reproach  to  perfect  his  humanity?  Suffering  is 
no  part  of  the  soul;  the  soid  has  need  to  suffer,  but 
it  is  made  to  rejoice;  and  when  it  has  earned  its 
joy,  it  will  abide  in  it. 

And  now  a  word  of  personal  experience.     This 


44°  The  Silent  Isle 

book  is  a  record  of  an  experiment  in  happiness.  I 
had  the  opportunity,  and  I  took  it,  of  arranging  my 
life  in  every  respect  exactly  as  I  desired.  It  was 
my  design  to  live  alone  in  joy;  not  to  exclude  others, 
but  to  admit  them  for  my  pleasure  and  at  my  will. 
I  thought  that  by  desiring  little,  by  sacrificing 
quantity  of  delight  for  quality,  I  should  gain  much. 
And  I  will  as  frankly  confess  that  I  did  not  suc- 
ceed in  capturing  the  tranquillity  I  desired.  I 
found  many  pretty  jewels  by  the  way,  but  the  pearl 
of  price  lay  hid. 

And  yet  it  would  be  idle  to  say  that  I  regret  it. 
I  may  wish  that  it  had  all  fallen  out  otherwise,  that 
things  had  been  more  comfortably  arranged,  that  I 
had  been  allowed  to  dream  away  the  days  in  my 
hermitage;  but  it  was  not  to  be;  and  I  have  at  least 
learned  that  not  thus  can  the  end  be  attained. 
The  story  of  my  failure  cannot  be  told  here,  but  I 
hope  yet  to  find  strength  and  skill  to  tell  it.  At 
present  I  have  but  endeavoured  to  catch  the  texture 
of  the  pleasant  days,  before  my  visions  began  to  fade 
about  me.  And  indeed  I  can  say  sincerely  that 
those  days  were  happy;  but  the  root  of  the  mistake 
was  this :  I  have  by  nature  a  very  keen  appetite 
for  the  subtle  flavours  of  life,  a  sense  of  beauty  in 
simple  things,  a  relish  for  the  absurdities  and 
oddities  as  well  as  for  the  beauties  and  finenesses  of 
temperament,  a  critical  appreciation  of  the  char- 
acteristic qualities  of  landscapes  and  buildings,  a 
sense   which  finds  satisfaction   as  well  in   such 


Epilogue  441 

commonplace  things  as  the  variety  of  grotesque 
vehicles  that  go  to  compose  a  luggage  train,  or  the 
grass-grown,  scarped,  water-logged  excavations  of 
a  brick-field,  as  in  the  sharp  rock-horns  of  some 
craggy  mountain,  impulsive  as  a  frozen  flame,  or 
the  soft  outlines  of  fleecy  clouds  that  race  over  a 
sapphire  heaven.  If  one  is  thus  endowed  by 
nature,  it  seems  such  an  easy  thing  to  seclude  one- 
self from  life,  and  to  find  endless  joy  in  sight  and 
hearing  and  critical  appreciation.  Instead  of 
mingling  with  the  throng,  marching  and  fighting, 
fearing  and  suffering,  it  seems  easy  to  stand  apart 
and  let  nature  and  art  and  life  unfold  itself  before 
one  in  a  rich  panorama.  But  not  on  such  terms 
can  life  be  lived.  One  hopes  to  avoid  suffering  by 
aloofness;  but  there  falls  upon  the  spirit  a  worse 
sickness  than  the  weariness  of  toil — the  ache  of 
pent-up  activities  and  self-tortured  mystifications. 
The  soid  becomes  involved  in  a  dreary  metaphysic, 
wondering  fruitlessly  what  it  is  that  mars  the  sweet 
and  beautiful  world.  The  fact  is  that  one  is 
purloining  experience  instead  of  paying  the  natural 
price  for  it,  estimating  things  by  the  outside  in- 
stead of  from  the  inside,  and  growing  thus  to 
care  more  for  the  strangeness,  the  contrast,  the 
picturesqueness  of  it  all,  than  for  the  love  and  the 
hope  and  the  elemental  forces,  of  which  the  world 
is  but  the  garb  and  scene. 

Here  in  this  book  the  mind  turns  from  itself  and 
its  rest,  when  it  has  satisfied  its  first  delight  in 


442  The  Silent  Isle 

creating  the  home,  the  setting,  the  scenery,  so  to 
speak,  of  the  drama;  turns  to  the  men  and  women 
who  cross  the  stage,  surveys  their  gestures  and 
glances,  interprets  their  movements  and  silences; 
and  then  winds  out  into  the  further  distance,  the 
towns,  the  buildings,  the  roads,  that  stand  for  the 
designs  and  desires  of  pilgrims  that  have  passed 
into  the  unknown  country,  leaving  their  provender 
for  later  hands  to  use.  But  the  whole  book,  if  I 
may  say  it,  is  the  prelude  to  the  further  scene,  the 
silent  entry  of  Fate,  the  coming  of  the  Master  to 
survey  the  servant's  work. 

Those  pleasant  days  have  a  savour  of  their 
own  for  this  one  reason — that  they  were  not  spent 
in  a  mere  drifting  indolence  or  a  luxurious  aban- 
donment. They  were  deliberately  planned, intently 
lived,  carefully  employed;  behind  the  pleasures  lay  a 
great  tract  of  solid  work,  very  diligently  pursued. 
That  was  to  have  been  the  backbone  of  the  whole;  and 
it  is  for  this  that  I  have  no  sense  of  regret  or  con- 
trition about  it.  It  was  an  experiment;  and  if  in 
one  sense  it  failed,  because  it  did  not  take  account 
of  energies  and  elements  unused,  in  another  sense  it 
succeeded,  because  one  cannot  learn  things  in  this 
world  by  hearsay,  but  only  by  burning  one's 
fingers  in  what  seemed  so  comfortable  a  flame.  It 
was  done,  too,  on  the  right  lines,  with  the  desire 
not  to  be  dependent  upon  diversion  and  stir  and 
business,  but  to  approach  life  simply  and  directly, 
practising  for  the  days  of  loneliness  and  decline; 


Epilogue  443 

and  this  was  the  error,  that  it  tried  to  mould  life 
too  much,  to  select  from  its  material,  to  reject  its 
dross  and  debris,  to  rifle  rather  than  to  earn  the 
treasure,  to  limit  hopes,  to  clip  the  wings  of  in- 
convenient desires. 

But  it  is  difficult,  without  experiment,  to  realise 
the  strain  of  living  life  too  much  in  one  mood  and  in 
one  key.  Neither  is  it  the  sign  of  a  healthy  appe- 
tite to  be  particular  about  one's  food.  This  I 
freely  admit.  I  came  to  see  that,  trained  as  I  had 
been  in  certain  habits  of  life  and  work,  habituated 
to  certain  experiences,  the  savour  of  the  interludes 
had  oived  their  pungency  to  their  economy  and 
rarity. 

And  so,  like  some  weft  of  opalescent  mist,  the 
sweet  mirage  melted  in  the  noonday.  What  I  then 
saw  I  will  leave  to  be  told  hereafter;  but  it  was  not 
what  I  desired  nor  what  I  expected. 

What,  then,  remains  of  the  time  of  plenty?  Not, 
I  am  thankful  to  say,  either  vanity  or  vexation  of 
spirit.  It  was  what  remains  to  the  ruffled  bird,  as  he 
shivers  in  the  leafless  tree,  in  which  he  had  sung  so 
loud  in  the  high  summer,  embowered  in  greenness 
and  rustling  leafage.  No  sense  of  the  hollowness  or 
sadness  of  life;  but  rather  a  quickened  knowledge  of 
its  delight  and  its  intensity.  It  is  the  same  feeling 
that  one  has  when  one  speeds  swiftly  in  a  train 
near  to  some  place  where  one  Vved  long  ago, 
and  sees  glimpses  of  familiar  woods  and  roads  and 
houses.     One  knows  well  that  others  are  living  and 


444  The  Silent  Isle 

working,  sauntering  and  dreaming,  in  the  rooms, 
the  gardens,  the  paths  where  one's  own  energies 
once  ran  so  swiftly;  yet  the  old  life  seems  to  be 
there  all  the  time,  hidden  away  behind  the  woods 
and  walls,  if  one  could  but  find  it  I  But  I  no  more 
wish  my  experience  away,  or  wish  it  otherwise, 
than  I  wish  I  had  never  loved  one  who  is  gone  from 
me,  or  that  I  had  never  heard  a  strain  of  sweet 
music,  because  it  has  died  upon  the  air.  Because  I 
did  not  find  what  I  was  in  search  of,  or  only  found 
a  shadow  of  it,  I  do  not  believe  that  it  is  not  there — 
the  wheat-flour  and  the  honey  are  in  the  hand  of 
God.  I  should  have  tasted  them  if  I  had  but  walked 
in  His  way  !  Nay,  I  did  taste  them;  and  when 
He  gives  me  grace  to  hearken,  I  shall  be  fed  and 
satisfied. 


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influenced  the  opinion  of  Europe.  His  keen 
analysis  of  the  institutions  and  opinions  of  the 
day,  his  absolute  fearlessness  in  regard  to  certain 
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CONTENTS 

D'ALEMBERT  ;       .     .     .     .       The  Thinker 

DIDEROT  The  Talker 

GALIANI         The  Wit 

VAUVENARGUES         ...     The  Aphorist 

D'HOLBACH        The  Host 

GRIMM  The  Journalist 

HELVETIUS         .     .     .        The  Contradiction 

TURGOT The   Statesman 

BEAUMARCHAIS       .     .     .   The  Playwright 
CONDORCET        ....        The  Aristocrat 

1  "  An  anecdotal  history  arranged  in  the  form  of  a  series 
of  biographical  sketches  and  written  in   a   vivacious  and 

fluent  style The  author  has  shown  taste  and 

judgment  in  selecting  amusing  stories,  witty  sayings,  and 
lively  traits  of  character." — London  Athentcum. 


New  York — G.    P.    Putnam's    Sons — London 


AA    000  38nQ 


on 


